K-Dramas, algorithms and adolescence: When digital fantasy becomes an emotional shelter

These two stories — one involving clinical psychosis, the other a fatal fixation — frame a disturbing question: in an age of limitless digital immersion, where does passionate fandom end and a break from reality begin?

A universe driven  by algorithms

The universe the sisters immersed themselves in is designed to appeal. South Korea’s Hallyu, or Korean Wave, has reached India through music, television and online platforms. K-pop streaming in India surged 362 percent between 2018 and 2023, powered by global phenoms such as BTS, data from the Korea Foundation for International Cultural Exchange shows.

Yet psychologists caution against simplistic explanations.

“The problem begins when we look for a single cause,” says Itisha Nagar, a Delhi-based psychologist who works with children. “There is a lot of focus on Korean dramas and too little focus on the contexts children are growing up in today.”

For many Indian viewers, entry into this universe is driven by the algorithm.

Children retreat into fantasy worlds that offer relief and consistency. (Image generated using AI)

Abhyudaya Karamchetu, 32, a public relations professional in Hyderabad, recalls being pulled in almost accidentally around 2018, when short, unexplained clips from Boys Over Flowers, a popular K-drama, began appearing repeatedly on her Facebook feed. “I didn’t even know the title,” she says. “I used to just see two-or three-minute clippings, and when I tried to search, it would disappear.”

Curious, she began searching online for fragments of scenes, scrolling through comment sections for context, before downloading an app which offers community-powered subtitles for Asian dramas and movies. “Now, these dramas are easily accessible,” she says.

That accessibility, psychologists say, matters most when fantasy stops being a temporary escape and begins to function as an emotional shelter.

Fantasy as emotional shelter

For vulnerable children, digitally mediated fantasy worlds can become carefully constructed spaces of safety — predictable, controllable and emotionally legible in ways real life is not. “A child’s basic right is to feel safe, physically and emotionally,” says Namrata Mahajan, a counselling psychologist in Gurugram. “When that safety is missing, the brain, which is wired for survival, will hold on to something else.”

In these circumstances, children retreat into fantasy worlds that offer relief and consistency, often forming parasocial attachments to fictional characters or celebrities who feel attentive, protective and emotionally available. Over time, these imagined relationships can begin to substitute for real ones, making the return to everyday life (with its conflicts, ambiguities and disappointments) feel overwhelming.

“Children resort to living in a world of fantasy when they can no longer find solace in the real world,” says Chahal.

Image generated using AI

The appeal of K-dramas

K-dramas are structured for immersion. Usually limited to 16 episodes, they are designed for binge-watching and emotional payoff. Unlike many Indian television soap operas, they frequently centre professional women and male leads whose authority is tempered by restraint.

“When you go deeper, you see the kind of respect the lead actor gives to the woman,” Karamchetu says. Even when the male lead is rude or arrogant initially, “there is a certain limit to that arrogance. There is mutual respect even in hatred.”

Jagadeesh Reddy, a cultural observer and curator who has previously worked with the Korean Cultural Centre India, situates this appeal within a broader cultural strategy. Korean content, he says, is part of a carefully built ecosystem of soft power, where music, drama, food, beauty and language reinforce one another.

“How do you know a country?” he asks. “First through food and music. Then tourism, then stories.” Korea, he says, began with music, followed by television dramas and beauty culture, creating multiple points of emotional entry.

Format matters too. “We are not really creating youth-related content here,” he says. Indian television, he observes, remains dominated by long-running daily soaps centred on family conflict. Korean dramas, by contrast, targeted younger audiences much earlier, offering tightly written 16-episode arcs that could be consumed in bursts. “You can binge-watch them,” he says. “And the stories are aspirational — they give that adrenaline of somebody trying to achieve something or fighting the conditions they are in.”

Image generated using AI

That aspiration resonates strongly with Indian youth navigating academic pressure, social comparison and limited emotional vocabulary.

What children are escaping from

Understanding this appeal requires looking beyond screens. “Urban living, nuclear families, polluted environments, social media, internet exposure, sedentary lifestyles, corporate schooling and survival-centric parenting leave very little space for emotional presence,” Nagar says. “We have turned our eyes away from children because there is so much else demanding attention.”

In that absence, other forces step in. “K-dramas are designed in a way that can make anyone, adults as well as children, feel warm, connected and special,” she says. “But any kind of obsession or addiction is always an escape from the norm.”

When real attachment figures are unavailable, fictional characters become emotionally reliable substitutes. (Image generated using AI)

The difference with children, Nagar adds, is developmental. “Unlike adults, children find it difficult to differentiate the real from the unreal.” What is often described as an obsession is better understood as a search for validation.

Not the first wave, but a deeper one

This is not the first time that a generation has built its own fantasy refuges.

In the 1980s, tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons provoked moral panic for encouraging immersive alternate identities.

In the 1990s, satellite television brought MTV, American sitcoms like Friends and global pop into living rooms, sparking anxieties about Westernisation. The 2000s saw Japanese anime — from Dragon Ball Z to Naruto — build devoted followings, followed by the immersive worlds of online games and TV dramas from various countries.

Later came massively multiplayer online games, fantasy fandoms and cinematic worlds like Harry Potter, each offering coherent mythologies that felt more ordered and emotionally legible than everyday life.

What distinguishes the current Korean wave is integration.

Today’s digital ecosystems collapse music, television, fashion, language, beauty standards and fandom into a single, always-on emotional environment, accessed privately and continuously through personal screens. It is a complete world, offering not just stories but an entire aesthetic and identity toolkit.

For older viewers like Karamchetu, immersion often remains bounded. She reads fan theories and fan fiction on platforms like Wattpad, but resists translating admiration into lifestyle emulation.

For adolescents, however, the boundary between admiration and identity is more porous. Saina Singh, 16, from Jammu, observes that in her peer group, fluency in this universe is mandatory social currency. “If you don’t know those references,” she says, “you’re thought to be living under a rock.”

Technological shifts

The rise of this phenomenon cannot be separated from broader technological shifts. Affordable smartphones and cheap data have made high-speed internet nearly universal. Post-pandemic, Chahal says, “every child has access to a device.”

“Peer influences work here as in the case of drug addiction,” Chahal says. “Children hear about certain shows or games from their peers, but those at risk develop an addiction.”

She has seen a paradigm shift across class. “Parents are working all day long, and there is no one to supervise the child.”

At its most profound, this engagement evolves into parasocial relationships — the one-sided sense of intimacy with a media persona.

Mahajan explains the core need. “A child’s basic right is to feel safe,” she says. “When the child does not feel this, our brains and bodies, which are wired for survival, will hold on to something else.”

When real attachment figures are unavailable, she says, fictional characters become emotionally reliable substitutes. Abruptly cutting off these worlds can feel catastrophic. “It’s almost like a crisis for that person,” she says. “Because that child is so used to that ideal world that coming back to the real self is really very terrifying.”

Mahajan cautions against seeing this as a problem of a specific culture. “I would not see a particular culture as bad. It is about how we are using it.” What matters is whether engagement disrupts daily life, relationships and emotional regulation.

Beyond screens

The solution, experts say, lies in emotional availability and teaching resilience. Children need meaningful time and presence, a sense that they matter beyond performance or compliance.

Today’s digital ecosystems allow fantasy identities, communities and narratives to operate without pause, supervision or ritual closure, making the boundary between imaginative play and emotional dependence far more fragile for adolescents still learning to anchor themselves in the real world.