Lonely Young Adults Are Turning to “Virtual Parents” Online
Across China’s short-video platforms, a quiet emotional trend is pulling millions of young people toward strangers who speak like parents but demand nothing in return.
They are called “virtual parents,” and their appeal is painfully simple. They look into the camera, call the viewer their child, offer comfort after work, praise effort that nobody else noticed, and create the feeling of coming home without the pressure that home can bring.
For many young Chinese adults, this is not just internet entertainment. It is a soft landing after years of academic pressure, job uncertainty, family criticism, and the heavy expectation to succeed before they are ready to breathe.
The videos are not complicated. A middle-aged couple may sit at a dinner table, speak gently to the camera, or pretend to welcome a tired son or daughter back from another hard day. The message is often the same: you have worked hard, you do not have to prove your worth tonight, and someone is proud of you.
The rise of “virtual parents.”
The phrase “virtual parents” refers to content creators who serve as warm, supportive mothers and fathers for online audiences. On Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, these creators build short emotional scenes that feel like family moments rather than polished influencer posts.
One of the best-known couples in this space, Pan Huqian and Zhang Xiuping, has drawn a massive audience by speaking directly to viewers as if they were their children. Their videos are built around everyday care: checking whether someone has eaten, asking whether work has been exhausting, or reminding viewers that success should not come at the cost of their health.
That kind of tenderness may seem ordinary, but it lands differently in a culture where many young people grew up hearing discipline more often than praise. For some viewers, the videos create a version of family life they wish they had known.
The comment sections show the emotional weight behind the trend. Young people call these creators “mum” and “dad,” ask for birthday blessings, confess anxiety about exams and work, or share personal updates with strangers who feel safer than relatives. The result is a digital family room where thousands of people gather, not because they believe the creators are truly their parents, but because the performance gives them something emotionally useful.
Why the videos feel so personal
The success of virtual parents is not only about loneliness. It is about the particular kind of loneliness that comes from being surrounded by expectations while feeling emotionally unseen.
A young worker may have parents who call every week, but those calls can become checklists: job, salary, marriage, housing, stability, children. A student may be supported financially but still feel that love arrives only when grades are high enough. A graduate may hear advice every day but rarely hear comfort. This is where the virtual parent format becomes so effective. It removes the conflict and leaves only the care.
There is no interrogation about career choices. No demand for marriage. No lecture about why a government job is safer than a private-sector role. No comparison with a cousin who bought an apartment earlier or married sooner.
A generation raised between prosperity and pressure
Many of China’s young adults grew up in a country transformed by economic growth. Their parents and grandparents lived through harsher national conditions, including poverty, political upheaval, and years when survival mattered more than emotional expression.
That history shaped family culture. Many parents believed pressure was protection. They pushed children toward stable careers because instability was not an abstract fear for them. They valued obedience because they had learned that safety often came from caution.
But the children of that generation inherited a different reality. They grew up with better schools, bigger cities, digital life, and wider ambitions. At the same time, they entered adulthood during a more uncertain economy, a tighter job market, and a social climate where success still feels mandatory. This gap has created a painful misunderstanding. Parents may think they are helping by demanding more. Their children may experience that same pressure as rejection. Virtual parents have become popular because they step into that gap. They offer the warmth without the weight.
Youth unemployment exacerbates the emotional pressure.
China’s young adults are not imagining the pressure around them. The competition for jobs is real, and it has become one of the defining forces behind youth anxiety.
For graduates and early-career workers, the path from education to stable employment has become less predictable. A degree no longer guarantees security. Tech and private-sector jobs that once looked glamorous can feel volatile. Government roles and state-linked jobs appear safer, but they are highly competitive and often come with family pressure attached.
This is why career criticism inside families can hurt so deeply. When parents question a young adult’s job choice, it may not sound like advice. It can sound like a verdict on their entire life.
The pain behind “tough love.”
Many families defend strict parenting as an expression of love. The logic is familiar: we criticize you because we care, we pressure you because we want you to survive, we compare you because we want you to improve. But young people increasingly question whether love that never softens can still feel like love.
Online conversations in China have become full of stories about controlling parents, emotionally distant households, academic pressure, and family chats that feel more like audits than conversations. Some young adults joke about it through memes because humor gives them distance from the pain they cannot easily confront at home.
One viral idea often discussed in this space is the familiar parental habit of ignoring a child’s actual wishes while insisting that everything is being done for the child’s own good. The humor works because so many people recognize the pattern.
A parent offers care; the child declines; the parent feels rejected; and the child becomes the problem. The issue is no longer the soup, the advice, or the errand. The issue becomes obedience. Virtual parents reverse that dynamic. They do not demand that the viewer accept anything. They simply offer softness and let the viewer receive it privately.
Why strangers can feel safer than family
It may seem strange that young adults would turn to strangers for comfort that they cannot get from their own parents. But emotional safety is not always tied to biology. A stranger on a screen cannot punish a viewer for being honest. A creator cannot shame someone at the next family dinner. A virtual parent does not bring up old mistakes, marriage deadlines, exam failures, or the cost of raising a child.
That distance makes the comfort easier to accept. The viewer knows the relationship is not real in the traditional sense. They know the video is produced for an audience. Some know the creators may be managed, monetized, or shaped by platform incentives.
