What Is the Effect of Long-Term Fandom?

Table of ContentsView AllTable of ContentsHistory of FansWhat Is Long-Term Fandom?The Effects of Fandom On Different Life Stages

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Table of Contents

History of Fans

What Is Long-Term Fandom?

The Effects of Fandom On Different Life Stages

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The increased acceptance of being a fan throughout the lifespan has also led to people’s fan objects holding a more important place in their lives. This means people are more likely to turn to media to fulfill their psychological needs during allstages of development, including adulthood, and the media of which one is a fan can play a role in defining an individual’s identity.

This article will explore how fandom impacts adults where norms marking the traditional milestones of this part of life have rapidly shifted. It will then discuss how fandom can help meet psychological needs during adolescent and adult stages of development.

In the early twentieth century, devotees of science fiction literature magazines embraced the term as they developed the first modern fandom in the letter pages of these publications. Around 1966, the first television fandom emerged, although there is debate as to whether it was built around the showThe Man from U.N.C.L.E. or the original version of the television seriesStar Trek.

What the Term “Fan” Means Today

Today, the term fan has come to mean an individual who is a loyal enthusiast of an interest, from sports to celebrities to movies to video games.

Fans derive both a personal andsocial identityfrom their fandom, defining themselves in terms of both the individual reasons they were attracted to a movie, show, or other fan object and as a member of the fan group for that fan object, whether or not they participate in online or in-person fan activities, such as attending fan conventions or posting to internet fan groups.

Interestingly, while scholars have studied both sports fans and pop culture fans for decades, they often treated pop culture fans as odd, deviant, or evenpathological.

Today, people mayget marriedmultiple times, switch jobs regularly, return to school or make career changes in middle age, andhave childrenwell into adulthood.

Without a standard trajectory to look to for how to navigate their adult years, people turn to other reference points to anchor their identities, particularly fan objects.

How Long-Term Fandom May Influence Your Life

Long-term fandom entailsdefining oneselfas a fan of a fan object or objects over an elongated period of time during the lifespan, often resulting in a fan using their fan object or objects to create meaning and inform the evolution of their sense of self throughout adulthood. This can happen in several ways:

In each of these instances, fan objects serve as an extension of the self, into which fans place their understanding ofwho they are, including their attributes, their values and beliefs, and their identities. Consequently, as the fan grows and ages, their sense of self evolves in dialogue with their fan object or objects.

Erikson’s stage theory specifies eight life stages from birth to death that each require the individual to resolve a particular developmental crisis.

This is how fandom can help resolve the developmental crisis at several stages:

Research has not yet shown whether this increase in dependence on fandom to define one’s self throughout the lifespan has a positive or negative impact.

However, Steverpoints out that, just like other cultural touchstones or real-life relationships, the effect of long-term fandom is probably a continuum from positive to negative, with different people falling at different places along it.

The Social Media and Mental Health Connection

10 Sources

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

Jenkins H.Textual Poachers: Television Fans And Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge; 1992.

Coppa F. A brief history of media fandom. In: Busse K, Hellekson K, ed.Fan Fiction And Fan Communities In The Age Of The Internet: New Essays. 1st ed. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers; 2006:41-59.

Reysen S, Branscombe NR.Fanship and fandom: Comparisons between sport and non-sport fans.J Sport Behav. 2010;33(2):176-193.

Petersen LN.Gilmore Girlsgenerations: Disrupting generational belonging in long-term fandom.Celebr Stud. 2018;9(2):216-230. doi:10.1080/19392397.2018.1465301

Stever GS.Fan Behavior and Lifespan Development Theory: Explaining Para-social and Social Attachment to Celebrities.J Adult Dev. 2010;18(1):1-7. doi:10.1007/s10804-010-9100-0

Stever GS. How Do Parasocial Relationships with Celebrities Contribute to Our Development Across the Lifespan?. In: Shackleford KE, ed.Real Characters: The Psychology Of Parasocial Relationships With Media Characters. Santa Barbara: Fielding University Press; 2020:119-144.

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