Why Do We Care So Much About the #SummerOfBreakups?

Back in 2015, a new hashtag jumped onto the Twitter scene, pushing people to question everything they thought they knew about love and romance. The #SummerOfBreakups hashtag was the beacon for every celebrity breakup that took place that year. Importantly, the breakups didn’t just happen throughout summer either, the hashtag continued to trend well into Autumn too.

While obsession over celebrity love lives isn’t anything new for the modern world, the rise of social media has drawn extra attention to just how much time people spend thinking about the relationships of their famous idols. Psychologists and other people in the media have been left to wonder why people care so much about things like the #SummerOfBreakups. Now that summer is here again, we thought it was time to find out.

Summer Breakups are Common for Celebrities

First of all, the #SummerOfBreakups hashtag is popular, in some part because there always seems to be some kind of relationship drama happening in Summer when it comes to celebrity relationships. Since people are always searching for entertainment in the form of updates from other people’s lives, it’s no big surprise, that the “Summer of Breakups” hashtags would start trending again when the heat starts to rise.

For most people, the holiday season and winter months are some of the most common times for breakups. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case for celebrities. Some media icons suggest that celebrities deliberately time their breakups throughout Summer so that they can avoid some of the press by heading out on summer vacations. According to other psychologists however, the key for many celebs is trying to reduce stress before awards season rolls around.

Why People Care about the #SummerOfBreakups

Putting the reasons for heart break during the heatwave season aside, it’s worth looking at why people are so obsessed with celebrity relationships in the first place. From one perspective, it’s easy to argue that a lot of people base their ideal image of the perfect relationship on the love affairs that they see happening between celebrities. Whether it’s healthy or not, celebs with perfect lives sometimes seem to have the ideal relationships.

When the relationships of celebrities start to fall apart, this can have a negative effect on everyday people, who feel as though they’ll never come close to the relationships that these people have in the first place. People automatically get invested with the ups and downs of a successful person’s life – and many fans actually attempt to copy the people who are most successful in an attempt to achieve success in themselves. That’s why periods in a celebrity’s life can depress or motivate other people.

The important thing to remember as we head through another summer is that celebrities are just people. When people start using famous individuals as the standard for their relationship goals, and get depressed when those goals don’t work out, they ignore the fact that celebrities are still human beings that fight break up, and struggle through the search for love.

–5WPR Ronn Torossian