As an enthusiastic transactional analyst, I also want to share the wonderful message of transactional analysis (TA) with my daughter. Since she is only two, she naturally cannot read difficult texts. However, there is one book my daughter dearly loves, even though it is in English and not in German: "The Original Warm Fuzzy Tale" by Claude Steiner. While we talk about the fact that the bad warlock is not “Papa” and my daughter laughs out loud, I realized something: Claude Steiner could, in a way, see the future. Prepare to be surprised, curious, frightened and maybe it will come to a happy end.

The original warm fuzzy tale

For those who do not know the story, Steiner writes about humankind. All people once had a bag filled with unlimited warm fuzzies (positive strokes) and gave them out freely to anyone who wanted them, asked for them or simply wanted to share kindness. A bad warlock did not like this, as he could not sell his potions and salves, so he made a plan. He told one of the main characters, Tim, that warm fuzzies were not endless. The warlock warned that if Tim did not take care, his wife would give all the warm fuzzies to the children and have none left for him.

The rumor that warm fuzzies were limited spread, and people stopped giving them out. Because of the lack of warm fuzzies, some people even died. The warlock needed customers, not dead people, so he invented cold pricklies. These were unlimited and, according to him, better than nothing. Some people tried to disguise cold pricklies as warm fuzzies, but in the end, they were still just cold pricklies (plastic strokes).

To elaborate on the topic of strokes, Widdowson (2025) explains them “… as acts of recognition from one person to another [that] indicate that our existence has been noticed by another person.” They can be positive or negative, and both can be conditional or unconditional. As Steiner (2009) notes, we humans have a profound need for strokes, just as we do for food and water. Warm fuzzies are positive strokes, while cold pricklies symbolize negative strokes. Plastic strokes are disguised as positive strokes but are in fact negative.

An example of a plastic stroke is: “The dress you are wearing is very colorful. You are very brave to wear this to the party.” If people cannot get positive strokes, they would rather have plastic or negative strokes to survive. Later, a woman came to the people who had not heard the rumor and began giving out warm fuzzies freely. The children started to do the same.

The adults did not like this and made a law against giving out warm fuzzies irresponsibly. Still, the children continued. To this day, we are not sure whether the children and the woman won or whether the adults won with their laws. This is the story in short, so we can go deeper into what I mean by “seeing into the future.” Let's have a look at two of the most used social media platforms for young people: Instagram and TikTok.

In 2025, 2.99 billion people used Instagram, for example (Statista, n.d.-a). Instagram is a platform for sharing photos or short videos with an audience of followers or even strangers, who can write comments and give likes. We could interpret likes and comments as strokes; if they are positive, we could see them as warm fuzzies or as plastic strokes. Right now, the social media platform TikTok is even more prominent in the lives of young children and adults, featuring very short videos.

Statista (n.d.-b) reports that 1.59 billion people use this social media tool. The most followed person has 160.7 million followers. To illustrate this number: Bangladesh has around 170 million residents. Steiner (1977) writes in his book: “Some people became ‘popular’ and got a lot of warm fuzzies without having to give any back. These people would then sell their warm fuzzies to people who were ‘unpopular’ and needed them to feel that life was worth living.”

Who is popular on Instagram? Influencers receive warm fuzzies without necessarily giving any back, and they sell their capacity for influence—their warm fuzzies—to people who need advertising. By doing so, they shower clients with positive attention if they pay. Additionally, plastic strokes are often given to the followers. Regarding plastic strokes, I would not say they are negative per se, but rather unmeaningful and empty, often carrying an ulterior message.

The problem is that the influencer’s reality represents only a certain part of their life. For the receiver, the frame of reference becomes very narrow, as they see only the influencer’s “perfect” life. The frame of reference is how a person sees their reality. Schlegel (1993) defines it as the meaning and value a person gives to the things they encounter.

TA posits that a person's psyche consists of three different ego states. The Child ego state is a kind of memory card where, according to Widdowson (2025), we save our experiences, emotions, hopes, fears, desires, wishes, fantasies and actions. The Adult ego state, simplified, reacts logically like a computer to the here and now. The Parent ego state is the memory space containing what we have absorbed from others.

It is mostly impacted by parents or parent figures, such as cultural and religious backgrounds. We know children internalize parental figures. As stated above, influencers could become a sort of parent figure that influences the Parent ego state. Instagram and other social media platforms also enable followers to engage in transactions.

For example, a user might comment, “Wow, your trip to Bali is amazing — you go, girl!” The social transaction may appear to be Adult-to-Adult, but the ulterior message can be Child-to-Child: “I would love to have your life, but I will never achieve that.” If the influencer responds with an automatic emoticon or a phrase like “You are awesome,” the ulterior message may become: “I know you would love to be me, but you won’t.” The message that sticks is the ulterior message.

Cornell et al. (2016) note that the Parent ego state also gets influenced, even in adulthood, regarding messages that are sensed to be appropriate and reliable. For some children and young adults, influencers play a very important role in their lives. Consequently, dangerous messages may be internalized by the audience. A young person might learn that they will only be worthy or happy if they travel constantly, eat in fancy restaurants, wear expensive clothes or look a certain way.

Erik Erikson and Instagram

As Erikson (1950/2021) writes, we all have different objectives to fulfill depending on our stage in life. A study by Faverio and Sidoti (2025) shows that in the United States (U.S.), 62% of teens from age 13 to 17 use Instagram. Erikson views the ages of 11 to 19 as the psychosocial crisis of identity versus role confusion. The teenager is busy grounding their social role and is often obsessively concerned with how others perceive them. They seek ways to align the roles and abilities they have cultivated over time with contemporary ideals and cultural models, which once again brings the Parent ego state into play.

If that development goes wrong, it could lead to a diffusion of identity. It is often hard for a young person to choose a profession, which takes a toll on the teenager. To hold themselves together, they partly over-identify with heroes and masses, making it seem as though the teenager loses themselves. According to the Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnosis (OPD-3) (Arbeitskreis OPD, 2024), if development fails, the person develops insecurity and a feeling of meaninglessness. Furthermore, the digital identity increasingly shapes the psychological identity.

How does Instagram influence beliefs about oneself, others and the world itself? My theory is that the glamorous lives of influencers also influence and strengthen the script beliefs of the recipient. The script is basically a life plan which, according to Stewart and Joines (2015), starts to be written by a person at birth and develops over the course of their life. Mostly, it is finished by the age of 12 and slightly revised in the teenage years.

Now back to the connection between social media and TA. The Parent ego state gets “infected” and narrows the frame of reference to materialistic thinking, generally absorbing the meaning of life of the parental figure. It especially influences people who have a “Be Perfect” driver. A driver in TA is something we establish in childhood under the influence of our parental figures, helping us navigate around them. As we know, being perfect is impossible, and we fall into a crisis if we fail to achieve it.

Right now on social media, there is a dangerous trend of self-optimization, which extends to plastic surgery and more. Looksmaxxing is explained by Tovey (2026): It can range from just wearing makeup or using shoe inserts to increase height, to extreme diets, plastic surgery and self-harm. As Halpin et al. (2025) state, men go as far as self-harm, such as bone-smashing.

How to handle the situation?

How do we find a solution to integrate social media with a healthy stroke profile, frame of reference and identity? How can we prevent kids from deriving their identity solely through social media and negatively influencing their Parent ego state? In Steiner's (1977) story, the “Hip Woman” gives out warm fuzzies freely and without worry. It is the role of parents, friends and family to be this “Hip Woman.” We can give our children warm fuzzies for their real identities and be role models by laying our mobile phones down.

Also, we can strengthen the Adult ego state of the growing child and help them develop a wider frame of reference. Social media can be fun and help people stay in contact, but it is also a kind of fairy tale in itself. Not all fairy tales have a happy ending, such as the stories of Hans Christian Andersen. In the story of the little match girl, the girl dies in the end. The good thing in our fairy tale is, as Steiner stated: We don't know who will win—the bad warlock and adults, or the kids and the hip woman.

According to Euronews (2026), there is already talk in Austria and the European Union (EU) about banning social media for kids under 14 years old. This goes in the right direction, allowing young people to form their identities without additional influence from social media. However, it is doubtful whether laws can truly prevent young people from using these platforms. In the end, the responsibility falls on us as parents, uncles and aunts.

So lay down your phone, turn off your personal computer (PC) and give your loved youngsters a big hug and some warm fuzzies. Talk to them, find out who they are and what they want. Discover their real selves. That is a never-ending adventure. Claude Steiner would approve!