Come December, dictionaries attempt to capture the texture of a year through our most searched words, and finally declare their Words of the Year.  In 2025, across English-language dictionaries, the focus settled on our digital lives and the emotional behaviour shaped by online platforms. Rather than marking a single event, the year’s vocabulary mapped how people are relating to that great disrupter, artificial intelligence. To explore what this pattern reveals, I spoke to Professor Simone Schnall, Professor of Experimental Social Psychology at the University of Cambridge, about why terms such as parasocial, rage bait and AI slop resonated so strongly in 2025, and what they suggest about contemporary mental life. Parasocial relationships and modern intimacy Cambridge Dictionary’s selection of parasocial brought renewed attention to one-sided emotional bonds, often formed with public figures, fictional characters or artificial intelligence. While the term feels current, Schnall placed the experience in a much longer historical context. “People have always been, to some extent, infatuated with celebrities,” she said. “It could have been actors on television, or even before that, …