In this reported essay, editorial assistant Aiyana Ishmael dives deep into modern crush culture on social media — with a specific look at Instagram stories — and explores the negative self-inflicted emotional impact of manipulating your crush.
Nia Wromas sat with her friend group at a Denny’s in South Beach when she opened her Snapchat to see her crush also at Denny’s — at the location forty minutes away in the Miami suburbs. In hopes of “casually” running into him, she packed her friends back into the car and sped to the other side of town in a record-breaking 20 minutes. He wasn’t there when she arrived, but she still posted a photo to her Snapchat story, sitting at one of the booths. Her crush replied an hour later: “Yo, you were at Denny’s too?” Success.
Social media has substantially altered the way Gen Z interacts with each other on a daily basis. The evolution of Instagram stories, Snapchat stories, Geotag stickers and Close Friends has transformed how we navigate relationships — platonic and romantic alike. But this widened access to each other has muddled the crush stage of romance, and turned what once was a butterfly-filled exploration of another person into a tactical parasocial strategy.
I don’t know the exact day my Instagram story posts changed from a casual portrayal of my day-to-day life into a quest to catch my crush’s attention. But now I keep tabs on the times he’s online, deliberating what content he’ll deem worthy of a red heart and curating posts tempting enough for him to reply to.
“Manipulation has a really negative connotation, but every single person manipulates their environment to get their needs met,” psychologist Dr. Bethany Cook tells Teen Vogue. “When we start to involve other people into the mix, that is where it gets tricky. Passive aggressive communication isn’t a great way to get your needs met, but that is the exact approach you're taking on social media — crafting something for one specific person with your one goal being for them to see it. It absolutely is manipulative, but we all manipulate things to get our way.”
As a generation raised on the internet, we’ve grown up with new ways to communicate, which simultaneously complicate the one thing we’re constantly chasing: connection. In middle school, this looked like sending a Facebook poke back and forth for months; in high school, I sustained Snapchat streaks; today, I’m convoluting my Instagram presence as an adult to create the “perfect” snapshot of who I am.
We’ve all heard the masses claim how un-fun Instagram is these days. From the rapidly changing algorithm to the excessive push for commerce, the app is not what it used to be. But with our lives so synced to our devices and the building pressure to depict your existence with the perfect blend of candor and curation, it’s tragically easy to create a warped sense of self. Add in the tiring practice of performing as your crush’s dream partner and the lines become even more blurred.
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Did he post his favorite soccer team on his story? Google: What is Real Madrid? The following week, your Instagram story casually happens to include a meme roasting their rivals, FC Barcelona. Easy enough, right? The early stages of fancying someone, especially when you don’t really know them yet, can feel crucial to your romantic trajectory. Gen Z is chasing a certain level of digital intimacy, one ironically barricaded by two phones, placing small breadcrumbs towards a false personality in fifteen second intervals.
“I would post things I knew were niche enough that [my crush] loved just to see if I would get a reaction,” 25-year-old Olivia says, whose name has been changed to protect her privacy. “One time I posted this UGK song that I had researched the night before, because he’s from Houston. I didn’t even really listen to their music like that, but I was like, ‘Let me just post this to see if he’s going to respond.’ After I posted it, he hit me with the: ‘What you know ‘bout this?’ That post opened up a whole new conversation for us.”
“This pressure to post isn’t necessarily that you want to, but that you have to,” Dr. Cook explains. “You become addicted to that dopamine rush of ‘Did they like it? Did they not? Did I get it right this time?’ It becomes a game.” There has been nothing more exhilarating for me than holding on to the small pocket of information my crush hands me and crafting the “perfect” moment, ready to whip out at my disposal when I feel the distance drifting between us, in desperate efforts to add sparks back to our connection.
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“You're playing an online game and if everybody knows that they're playing one, it's totally fine, but that’s not the case,” continues Dr. Cook. "What if you actually catch this person and you have laid the foundation, played the game, and now you're like, ‘I don't even know which route I took to get here.’ They're not going to know who you are, so you’re setting yourself up for failure.”
My friend India moved to New York City in 2019 for college. She soon began the tedious process of dating in the city, going on three dates with a guy she matched with on Tinder. She noticed him starting to slowly fade away from her, so she did what any reasonable young woman of the digital age would: post bait on Instagram.
“I knew subconsciously I was posting on my story solely because I wanted his attention, but I was also in denial and making excuses about it,” India says. “I was posting pictures that I hoped he’d think were attractive, hanging around the bar he worked at and in his general neighborhood because my thought was, ‘Oh, this is where all the cool people he knows are at,’ so I want to pretend that I'm just chilling in Park Slope randomly on a Wednesday, and maybe I might run into him. I knew that obviously I was being stupid for doing this, but I just felt heartbroken more than anything. I was upset over someone that I didn't even really date.”
Your crush posts to their Instagram story, but they don’t respond to your text messages. Through this kind of digital manipulation, we aim to regain control of the situation and take advantage of its reality. If I can’t reach him one-on-one, maybe I can reach him through Instagram.
Most of my crushes don’t make it past the starting gate, because I spend weeks building conversational pathways and possible reroutes my crush can take instead of venturing down the path of vulnerability, the key to genuine intimacy. In fear of rejection, I tread on the side of my own safety, mimicking his interests as my own, manufacturing interactions by posting content I know will capture him, instead of showing up as myself and seeing if our worlds naturally collide. It’s an endless game of American football — me the star quarterback, tossing targeted hail marys at my wide receiver in hopes he’ll never fumble my hidden messages. (Can you tell how many crushes I’ve had that like sports?)
“You can get so confused when you are trying to be something for someone else solely to get them to notice you,” Dr. Cook says. “Rather than just going ‘Hey, this is how I always look and who I truly am, like it or not,’ you are devaluing what you potentially bring to the table and you’re creating confusion in your identity. It’s so easy to quickly get sucked into trying to think of what else to be that you forget who you really are.”
Our society’s penchant for oversharing on social media, combined with the overwhelming amount of access we have to each other, has almost entirely dissolved the traditional courting process. Instead of enjoying the ebbs and flows of igniting a flame, we’re overanalyzing our potential partners and turning our relationships into transactional self-reward systems. I post a story on my page. Boy responds to the story. I am happy. Repeat. I post a story on my page. Boy does not reply. I am sad. Try again.
“My anxiety manifests very physically, so I will feel nauseous,” says Olivia. “My heart will start to beat really fast. I will sweat. I will just be completely consumed by it. It's very toxic… [if] I'm in the middle of my work day, but I go on Instagram and see that he's online, I’ll post something with the goal of being seen. Then if I try to go back to whatever I was doing at work, I literally can't focus — all I'm thinking about is checking my Instagram notifications to see if he responded.”
This self-sabotaging behavior is a conscious choice. Through social media manipulation, we are choosing to remove all the fun of building something authentic. When we focus our sights solely on if our attempts to connect were successful, like awaiting the results of a standardized test, we fail to focus on the human being on the other side of the phone. We are paying attention — but to the wrong things, exacting psychological warfare on ourselves through our own manipulative tactics.
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Social media has made me hyper-aware of public perception. I’m constantly asking my friends who they think I am based on my social media presence. It’s all mental notes, constructive criticism to help me better calibrate the girl I think my crush wants. I need to be funny, but not too goofy, so he takes me seriously. Sexy, but also the effortlessly beautiful girl next door. How many Instagram stories will it take for him to be enamored by my presence? Am I relatable, but also mysterious? Who am I to him?
I spent six months texting a guy who I assumed liked me back, because he was texting me back. Did I confirm those feelings verbally? No. But every response to my story convinced me feelings were growing. “When we project what we think we know, we highlight the important things about our crush and ignore the stuff we don't like,” Dr. Cook says. “That’s why parasocial relationships are so one sided because when we don’t have other data to challenge who we’ve built this person up to be, we believe our viewpoint is the only one.”
The meaningless emphasis I placed on the internet contorted my view. I assumed, because I spent hours planning my posts, re-sharing things meant for him and only him, that his posts held the same amount of hidden messages meant for me to decipher. Our relationship never progressed, but I analyzed his words for subtext and built emotional palaces out of possibilities, when I should have taken his actions at face value.
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“We are f*cking running on artificial shit,” Dr. Cook says. “Artificial will never fully fill you up; it will never satisfy you. You’re always going to be hungry, wanting more and the internet and social media is designed to prey on that — they create a psychological addiction. We are creating an environment where young people feel that they have to be accepted on a two dimensional screen and through a 30 second sound bite when humans were not made to exist that way.”
“It's such a painful experience that is entirely self-inflicted,” Olivia adds. “It seems like a natural part of the chase, but really it’s just an obsession. And if we're really being honest, all guys are probably just watching your Instagram stories while they’re on the toilet… It's not like they're clicking on your page and looking through your tagged photos the same way we are.”
I still catch myself sitting for minutes at a time rethinking a selfie to judge if it’s cute enough for my crush. I still find memes and immediately think, “He might find this funny.” But I’m working on stepping away from the phone and using my same thoughtfulness to foster something natural — something personal and less strategic, less manipulative. The movies make it seem fun to experience the highs and lows of falling for someone, even if they’re not the one meant to catch you. I now know there’s greater self-harm in trying to find love through a screen than IRL.
