What is Dear Parents?

Dear Parents is a Twitter phrasal template where writers reply that their on-screen smile is about fandom content, not a secret crush.

Where did Dear Parents come from?

Twitter user @particuIarmaze published the earliest known version on March 15, 2018, saying they were smiling at a "perfect meme," not a romantic partner.

What does Dear Parents mean?

It parodies parental worry about screen time by swapping the assumed boyfriend or girlfriend with a K-pop fancam, pop star photo, or fandom gif.

How do you use Dear Parents?

Open with the "Dear parents, just because your child is smiling..." line, then reveal the specific fandom, artist, or meme the writer is actually looking at.

Is Dear Parents still popular?

Usage peaked in June 2018 when @greenIight's Ariana Grande tweet reached 149,000 likes and Insider published a Twitter Moments page about the format.

Dear Parents

2018catchphraseclassic

Published November 13, 2026

Dear Parents is a Twitter phrasal template where teens mock the worry that smiling at a phone means romance, when really they're looking at fandom content. The format started with a March 2018 tweet and spread through stan Twitter that June with a viral version about an Ariana Grande gif.

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Overview

Posts open with "Dear parents, just because your child is smiling at their screen doesn't mean that they're talking to a guy or girl," then swerve into what the kid is actually watching. Reveals land on K-pop fancams, pop star photos, Niall Horan songs, or a specific reaction gif1. Writers set up a worried parent voice and undercut it with an absurdly niche fandom moment.

Humor comes from naming a real generational tension about screen time, then redirecting it by swapping the imagined romantic partner for an artist, show, or inside joke4. Dear Parents variations swap in whatever the writer is currently into, which helped the format stick with stan Twitter accounts through 2018.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Twitter

Date

2018

Twitter user @particuIarmaze published the earliest known Dear Parents post on March 15, 2018, writing that their smile was not about a crush but about finding "a perfect meme for a situation" and begging to "BreaTHe"1. The wording set the structure that later writers repeated with their own fandom-specific reveal4.

How It Spread

Three days after the origin, @zouislegendsx adapted the template on March 18, 2018 to credit Niall Horan's song "On the loose," gaining over 90 retweets and 320 likes within three months6. In April, @bangtan used the format for BTS's "taekook" ship and reached more than 5,000 retweets and 10,000 likes with a fancam reference3.

June of 2018 brought the biggest Dear Parents variants. @loveisasecret revived the template on June 4 with a Taylor Swift photo version that gained more than 1,000 retweets and 6,000 likes in ten days5. Three days later, @greenIight posted a version about a "low quality gif of ariana grande saying 'and what about it?'" that reached more than 28,000 retweets and 149,000 likes within a week, making it one of the most shared Dear Parents tweets2. On June 13, Insider's Twitter account published a Moments page tracking the format4.

Timeline

2018-03-15

@particuIarmaze posts the earliest known Dear Parents tweet, asking parents to let them "BreaTHe" over a meme.

2018-03-18

@zouislegendsx adapts the template to credit Niall Horan's song "On the loose."

2018-04-20

@bangtan writes a BTS taekook fancam version that gains over 5,000 retweets.

2018-06-04

@loveisasecret revives the format with a Taylor Swift photo variant.

2018-06-07

@greenIight's Ariana Grande "and what about it?" gif version reaches 149,000 likes within a week.

2018-06-13

Insider publishes a Twitter Moments page documenting the fandom template.

How to Use This Meme

Writers typically open with the "Dear parents, just because your child is smiling at their screen doesn't mean that they're talking to a guy or girl" line, then reveal what the kid is actually looking at. The common convention is a fandom payoff, such as a K-pop fancam, pop star photo, or a specific reaction gif3.