Study: Valentine’s Day 2023 Is All About Gifts, Less About Love

The commercialization of Valentine's Day is more prevalent than ever on social media, which may negatively impact mental health

Posted in: Communication and Media, Press Releases, Research

A romantic at heart may assume most people around the U.S. are preparing for their Valentine's Day date by posting famous love poems or searching lovey-dovey queries like, "How do you say ‘I love you’ in Farsi?"

But they would be wrong. New research from the Joetta Di Bella and Fred C. Sautter III Center for Strategic Communication at Montclair State University shows that the commercialization of Valentine's Day is more prevalent than ever, and a more realistic social media post would be less about romance and more about gifts and shopping.

To investigate the themes of Valentine's Day messaging in social media, Montclair researchers analyzed more than 80,000 posts using "#Valentinesday" and "#Valentinesday2023" on various social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram over a month in the leadup to February 14.

"The data on #Valentinesday is heavily cluttered with advertisements rather than messages of love on social media" said Jin-A Choi, assistant professor of Advertising at Montclair. "Brands are prepared to sell and consumers are ready to buy."

"Now more than ever it's important that heavy users of social media, especially young people, understand the difference between what they consume online, what actually might be happening, and how that might affect them," said Bond Benton, associate professor of Public Relations at Montclair. "Valentine's Day has always been heavily commercialized, but ubiquitous social media messages about buying something nice perhaps lead us to a skewed view of the meaning of the holiday and love in general."

This is the sixth study released by the Center for Strategic Communication, located within the School of Communication and Media. The Center provides social media analytics tools and training for faculty and students for classroom learning and research projects.

Full Report: Love Loses, So Says the Data

For more information or to set up an interview, contact the Media Relations team at Montclair State University.