Redesigning Families

Abstract

This MA thesis examines how young Koreans use online social media to seek a sense of belonging and intimacy that is often missing within traditional family structures.

Combining participant observation, interviews, and interface-based case studies (KakaoTalk, Zepeto), this research explores how specific platform features—avatars, gestures, emojis, memes, and ambient communication—mediate new forms of sociality and intimacy online.

Rather than using these tools passively, users actively appropriate and reshape platform structures, bending the intended functions of communication tools to build alternative communities.

The interplay between interface design and user practice reveals how emotional support and recognition, once embedded in family life, are being reconfigured through small design-mediated interactions—emoji exchanges, avatar poses and gestures, and the rhythmic flow of group chats. These practices show how interface design and user agency intersect to enable new forms of presence, care, and intimacy within dispersed yet connected digital environments.

Keywords: Digital Intimacy, Online Community, Interface Design, Social Affordances, Korean Family, Belonging

Prologue: From Empty Playgrounds to Digital Belonging

Shifts in Belonging in South Korea

I began this thesis with the word « Mogakco »—a Korean abbreviation for « gathering to code alone ». The phrase captures a paradox typical of contemporary Korean sociality: doing something together yet individually. Koreans often form groups not only to communicate but to feel a sense of belonging simply by being alongside others. Such practices have also migrated online. In Gather Town, for example, people meet in virtual rooms to do Mogakko sessions—working independently while maintaining the comfort of shared presence.

Gather Town is an online platform that recreates spatial proximity through 2D avatars, allowing users to move, talk, and collaborate as if coexisting in a shared environment.

It’s about people feeling that they belong somewhere
— Gather Town User

Recent surveys report that South Koreans aged 15 to 24 are significantly more likely than older generations to feel a sense of belonging through online relationships¹. This reflects a dramatic shift: while older generations recall building ties in families, schools, and playgrounds, today’s youth increasingly find connection online. In the 1990s, children in Korea still spent much of their time with family and neighborhood friends. But the situation today is radically different.

According to a survey by South Korea’s Ministry of Culture, many teenagers devote nearly all of their free time to private study, spending less than two hours a day on leisure activities². As a result, playgrounds remain almost empty, and teenagers spend most of their days studying.

Today, nearly every teenager in Korea owns a smartphone. Recent studies show that on weekdays they spend on average 4.7 hours per day using their phones, increasing to 6.6 hours on weekends, and over 85% of adolescents report using a smartphone for at least two hours daily³.

In the early 2000s, the Japanese animation .hack explored the psychological consequences of living inside a massively multiplayer online world. It imagined a future where players, trapped within a virtual reality, built entire lives—families, friendships, even memories—inside the digital realm. What once seemed like science fiction now reads as a striking metaphor for our time: the emotional realities of digital life are no longer separate from the « real ».

This shift was accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, when « offline » opportunities to socialize sharply declined. As family relations also became less close-knit, many young people increasingly turned to online spaces to meet others. This turn marks a wider transformation—from family as the primary site of emotional support to friendship as a chosen, flexible form of care and recognition, often mediated through screens.

As Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim point out in Individualization (2002), late-modern societies are characterized by « the disembedding of individuals from traditional social forms such as class and family » and by the demand that « each person must produce, stage and cobble together his or her own biography »⁴. However, empirical studies (Kim et al. 2018) show that loneliness mediates the strong relationship between adolescents’ anxiety and their dependence on smartphones⁵. These findings suggest that the weakening of family and community ties has not only normalized solitary lifestyles but also driven young people to seek new forms of belonging in digital spaces.

As digital platforms became integral to everyday life, they began to function not merely as tools for communication but as spaces where new forms of intimacy and belonging could take shape. Against this backdrop, I began to wonder how Korean youth—faced with empty playgrounds and diminishing family interaction—turn to online spaces such as social media and metaverses to cultivate forms of sociability unavailable offline.

This MA thesis therefore asks: How do young people in Korea create new modes of sociability through platforms, and what roles do interfaces play in shaping these relationships? How do they use emojis, avatars, and platform-specific cues to build relationships and communicate in ways that can compensate for the absence of traditional family and neighborhood ties?

To explore these questions in depth, I adopted a qualitative approach that could capture both users’ lived experiences and the technical affordances of platforms. I selected two contrasting but complementary case studies: KakaoTalk open chats, which are text-based and 2D, and the metaverse platform Zepeto, which is avatar-based and 3D.

KakaoTalk (2010) is South Korea’s dominant mobile messaging app, used by more than 90% of the population. Within this ecosystem, open chats (2015) provide semi-anonymous spaces where strangers can quickly become companions. Each room can host up to 1,500 participants.

Zepeto, launched in 2018 by Naver Z, is one of the country’s most prominent metaverse platforms. Through facial recognition and 3D modeling, users create avatars that allow them to explore virtual worlds and interact with others. While the service has grown into a global ecosystem with more than 300 million users, for many Korean teenagers it remains a highly familiar environment where identity, play, and social interaction converge.

Drawing on an online survey, participant observation, and semi-structured interviews, this study combines qualitative and mixed methods to examine how digital platforms shape new forms of sociability among young Koreans.

The goal of this research is to understand how young people in Korea use digital platforms to compensate for the emotional and social support that family once provided. The thesis is organized into three main parts. The first part analyzes the limits of family intimacy as described by young Koreans. The second part investigates how specific platform interfaces—such as avatars, gestures, and emojis—enable new forms of sociability. The third part explores how users repurpose these platforms beyond their intended design to create alternative modes of belonging.

Context: Between Collectivism and Solitude in Korea

Between Collectivism and Solitude in Korea

In Korea, the family has long served as a moral and emotional foundation that binds individuals through mutual obligation and harmony. Cultural anthropologist Yoon Young (2014) found that « family-centered collectivism remains deeply embedded in the value system of Korean society »⁶. As journalist Grace Kim (2017) observes, « South Koreans rarely use the word 'I’; instead, they say 우리 (we) even when talking about something personal like our mother or our home »⁷. The habitual use of 우리 (we) reveals how collectivist thought is woven into both speech and emotion.

Historical Shifts in the Family

In Korea, the traditional Confucian-style extended family once organized life through multigenerational households, patriarchal authority, and kin obligations. But as Korea industrialized rapidly from the 1960s onward, that model began to crumble. Chang Kyung-Sup (2010) argues that Korea’s social and economic transformation compressed many stages of modernization into a short time frame, destabilizing old familial solidarities and reshaping the logic of domestic life⁸.

Today, the statistics confirm how much the terrain has shifted: by 2023, single-person households reached 35.5% of all households nationwide—making single-person living a new norm rather than an exception⁹.

As family structures contract and more individuals live alone, many Koreans—long socialized in a « we »-centered family culture—find it increasingly difficult to experience intimacy, belonging, or emotional support from the family the way previous generations did.

Solitude and Digital Belonging

Young Koreans face growing economic insecurity, delayed marriage, and housing difficulties that push them toward increasingly individualized lives. In 2025, single-person households accounted for 40% of households in Seoul¹⁰. Recent surveys indicate that many Koreans attribute the rise of single-person households to the weakening of family values and the deepening of individualism¹¹.

This erosion of family connection is not limited to adults. Adolescents report growing emotional distance at home. Yang et al. (2025) found that weak family communication mediates the relationship between academic stress and smartphone overuse among middle-school students¹². The Children’s Worlds National Report South Korea (Lee et al. 2019) shows a steady decline in the proportion of children who agree with the statement « My parents listen to me and take what I say into account. »¹³

An interviewee A, a student at ECAL in August 2025, described this sense of emotional scarcity: « Korean society is especially competitive, and it is difficult to find intimacy in such a structure. That is why young people look for third spaces like Zepeto, where they can gain what they cannot in real life. »

Lee (2024) notes that South Korea’s kinship system has undergone « functional dissolution » as emotional support increasingly shifts from blood ties to mediated networks¹⁴. Within this context, digital platforms operate as what might be called alternative families—spaces where care, recognition, and everyday companionship are rebuilt through avatars, gestures, and emojis.

As Ayoub, a Media Design student at HEAD – Genève, explained: « I have a good relationship with my family… but if I have intimate things to say, I will usually reach out to my friends more than my family. »

This MA thesis therefore examines how such interfaces both enable and constrain new forms of emotional bonds in contemporary Korea.

Methods: From Fieldwork to Digital Observation

From Fieldwork to Digital Observation

This research began with an online survey distributed through Google Forms to identify which platforms are most commonly used by Korean youth (10s – 20s) and how these users express emotions and intimacy through specific design interfaces. The survey also asked whether respondents had ever experienced emotional comfort or a sense of belonging on these platforms—feelings often lacking within their family relationships. Based on the survey results, KakaoTalk and Zepeto emerged as the two most frequently used and emotionally significant platforms, and thus were selected as primary case studies.

Following the survey, I conducted participant observation and semi-structured interviews. These qualitative methods are particularly suited for capturing the lived experiences of users and the subtle interactional dynamics of digital platforms.

Online Survey — I conducted an online survey among Korean youth aged 18–29 to complement the qualitative data with a broader overview of online relational practices. Based on the survey results, I identified the two most frequently used platforms among respondents—KakaoTalk (text-based) and Zepeto (avatar-based)—which became the main case studies of this research.

Participant Observation — To understand how design affordances and interaction patterns unfold in practice, I conducted participant observation on KakaoTalk and Zepeto. On Zepeto, I created an avatar and joined various spaces to observe how users interacted with one another and with the interface. On KakaoTalk open chats, I joined multiple rooms to observe how users initiated and maintained interaction through text, with particular attention to how participants expressed emotions and built a sense of group belonging using emojis, memes, and conversational rhythm.

Interviews — The semi-structured interviews involved two groups. The first consisted of Korean youth who actively use KakaoTalk open chats and Zepeto. The second included experts whose practices or research focus on digital platforms and interface design—artist Florie Souday, researcher Loeva La Ragione, researcher Hortense Boulais-Ifrène, and interaction designer Nicolas Tilly.

Rather than pursuing long-term immersion in a single site, my fieldwork followed what Günel et al. (2020) describe as « patchwork ethnography »: an approach that responds to fragmented, digitally mediated fields and to the temporal limits of contemporary research¹⁵. My fieldwork thus consisted of alternating periods of observation, participation, and note-taking within several KakaoTalk open chat rooms and Zepeto virtual environments, combined with follow-up interviews conducted via Zoom.

Protocol

First, I conducted an online survey in July 2025 using Google Forms with Korean youth in their teens and twenties (n=13). The survey explored how young people relate online platforms to feelings of belonging and family structures.

Second, I carried out participatory observations within these two platforms between August and September 2025. In KakaoTalk open chats, I joined 2 different chat rooms organized around shared interests and observed interactions for about 3–4 hours per week over a 3 week period. In Zepeto, I entered more than 10 different virtual worlds and conducted observation sessions of approximately 30 minutes each.

Finally, I complemented these observations with a series of semi-structured interviews with users and experts.

Sampling

• Online Survey Age Range: 10s to 20s (n = 13)
• Interviews: 9 in total — 5 youth participants and 4 experts
• Observation Scope: 2 KakaoTalk open chat rooms (3 weeks) and 10 Zepeto worlds (30 minutes each)

Limitations

Some KakaoTalk groups were short-lived or closed, which made sustained observation difficult. The anonymity of both platforms made it difficult to recruit direct interviewees or verify identities. Zepeto’s global user base also complicated the focus on Korean youth. Interviewing teenagers proved especially challenging because of issues related to parental consent, minors’ rights, and ethical restrictions.

Case Study 1: KakaoTalk Open Chat

KakaoTalk Open Chat

KakaoTalk, South Korea’s dominant mobile messaging app, is used by more than 90 percent of the population for everyday communication. Its open chat function allows users to join topic-based group chats without revealing their phone numbers or real names, creating semi-anonymous spaces where strangers gather around shared interests or emotional needs.

Open Chat was developed in response to user feedback such as « I wish there were an easier way to start conversations with new people » and « I want to limit how much of my profile is exposed. » The feature allows users to set new profiles for each chatroom and supports both one-to-one and group conversations. It is widely used for hobby groups, study circles, and fan communities.

As a report (2021) notes, « MZ youth pursue loose connections—relationships formed through social media rather than through tight family or workplace bonds. These ties are goal-oriented and individualistic, allowing people to share interests without emotional burden. »¹⁶ On KakaoTalk’s open chat, users gather in rooms organized around keywords such as cats, dogs, illustration or Battlegrounds, engaging in casual, interest-based conversations.

In one chatroom I observed, a participant said, 저 진짜 친구가 없어요 (I really don’t have any friends), to which another immediately replied, 제가 친구 해드릴게요 (I’ll be your friend). In another room, someone said they had been feeling depressed, and a user responded warmly: 리나 힘든 일 있으면 말해, 다 들어줄게요 (If you have worries or feel down, tell me, I’ll listen to everything). These brief exchanges—simple offers of companionship typed between strangers—momentarily transform the chatroom into a space of care and solidarity.

Platform Dynamic and Social Affordance

The architecture of KakaoTalk open chat reveals how intimacy and belonging emerge through small but powerful design details. Following danah boyd’s concept of the affordances of networked publics—persistence, visibility, and scalability—these features can be understood as social affordances that shape how users perceive attention, empathy, and co-presence¹⁷. My observations suggest two intertwined layers: platform-provided features and user-created practices.

Platform-Provided Affordances

1. Nicknames and Profile Images — In the chatrooms I observed, participants rarely used real names. Instead, they adopted nicknames that mixed humor, affection, and fragments of personality. These nicknames act as small performances of identity. In some chatrooms, room rules required users to include specific identity markers—nickname + gender + birth year (e.g., 딸기 여 94). Profile images and nicknames operate as cultural codes that communicate belonging and intimacy. In Korea, the trend known as 프맞 (profile matching) illustrates this: friends coordinate their profile images, sometimes setting identical pictures or splitting one photo into several parts that connect across multiple accounts.

2. Emojis as Emotional Shorthand — KakaoTalk offers an extensive marketplace of emoji and sticker sets. In the open chatrooms I observed, these visual icons were central to interaction. Participants frequently responded not with full sentences but with images: a hamster clutching its chest in surprise, a duck shouting 가지마!!! (Don’t go), or a cartoon bear crying. These exaggerated faces and gestures functioned as emotional shorthand. As artist Florie Souday pointed out in our interview: « When I send memes or emojis to my family, they don’t have the same codes. It became a kind of cultural language that older generations cannot understand. »

3. Typing Indicators and Responsiveness — The flashing « … » sign in KakaoTalk may seem trivial, but in practice it carries emotional weight. It tells users that someone is there, thinking, about to reply. The opposite situation—what Koreans call 읽씹 (read without reply)—turns silence into something visible. In open chatrooms, because hundreds of messages can appear within minutes, users rarely expect a reply from everyone. What matters is not whether a specific person answers, but that someone does. The group itself absorbs the silence.

4. Voice Room — KakaoTalk’s Voice Room (2022) extends open chat beyond text into synchronous voice interaction. Users are divided into three roles: hosts, speakers, and listeners. Up to 10 speakers can talk at a time using a hand-raising system. Unlike text-based exchanges, voice rooms generate a sense of ambient co-presence—a mode of connection maintained through the quiet, ongoing presence of other people’s voices in the background.

User-Created Practices: Memes and Abbreviations

Users often dropped memes—known in Korean as 짤방—into the conversation without explanation. A single image could trigger a wave of laughter, followed by a cascade of similar reactions. People also played with language, using abbreviations like ㅅㅂㅍㅇㅍ (삼백플읽포), short for « I gave up reading after 300+ messages. » These insider codes made the chatroom feel smaller, more familiar.

Digital Belonging

KakaoTalk open chatrooms have become everyday spaces where young people can feel a sense of belonging. Even though these rooms were designed for light, interest-based conversation, many participants treat them as places to check in daily—somewhere to feel connected, to be seen, and to talk about what is happening in their lives. In these digital corners, belonging is not just about talking but about being there together.

Despite being a text-based app, KakaoTalk still manages to feel immersive. The sense of shared presence arises through multiple small design and interactional elements: the constant flow of rapid messages; typing indicators that signal others’ responsiveness; read-receipt counts that visualize attention; the expressive tone of emojis and stickers; and the rhythm of shared humor that circulates through memes.

Case Study 2: Zepeto metaverse

Zepeto metaverse

Zepeto, a 3D metaverse platform developed by Naver Z, has become one of the most popular virtual worlds among Korean youth and teenagers. As of 2024, the app hosts over 400 million users worldwide. On Zepeto, users create customizable 3D avatars to chat, build worlds, and interact through gestures, games, and virtual selfies.

For many young Koreans, Zepeto is more than a playful platform. It is a space where they are supposed to feel present, expressive, and sometimes emotionally connected in ways that everyday life does not allow. Unlike KakaoTalk open chat, where intimacy is constructed through language, Zepeto’s social world is more spatial. Here, communication unfolds through movement: waving, dancing, hugging, sitting side by side, or posing for group photos. These gestures create what might be called spatial intimacy—a feeling of closeness sustained not by text, but by shared rhythm and co-presence inside a virtual world.

My fieldwork in Zepeto between August and September 2025 involved visiting more than ten virtual worlds. I observed how people interacted through their avatars: entering and leaving rooms, waving, dancing, sitting side by side, or joining photo poses to signal presence and familiarity. In one world, I met a Russian user whose name I couldn’t read. We didn’t speak a word, but we spent nearly 20 minutes walking around together, taking turns posing or performing small gestures—jumping, sitting, sleeping. Even though no message was exchanged, there was a feeling of companionship.

In another world, one person started jumping. A few seconds later, others began to jump too—one by one, until the whole group was bouncing in rhythm. No one said « let’s do this », yet everyone joined. Such movements create what might be called ambient togetherness: a light, momentary sense of belonging built through motion rather than meaning.

Platform-Provided Affordances

1. Avatar Customization — Every interaction in Zepeto begins with the body—an avatar that must be created before entering the world. Zepeto encourages self-stylization: users can modify appearance at any time—adjusting hairstyle, facial features, skin tone, or outfits. Creator Items—custom clothing designed and sold by other users—further turn appearance into a social language. As Florie Souday added, referring to Legacy Russell’s Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto (2020), digital identities resist fixed categories of gender or realism. Zepeto’s avatars are not only tools of aesthetic play but also spaces of experimentation¹⁸.

Chakir, a media design student at HEAD – Genève, captured this fluidity: « The person I am online is definitely not the person I present myself as when I’m in a professional setting or I’m in class. I feel like my online persona is cooler than me. »

2. Gestures and Expressions — If text connects people through conversation, Zepeto connects them through movement. Users greet each other by waving or dancing; they take selfies, hug, or pose in groups. These actions, chosen from a gesture menu, often replace words. In Zepeto, movement is not just decoration; it is the language of care.

3. Camera, Live, and Visual Performance — Zepeto offers several ways for users to capture and display togetherness: the photo-with-others feature, the in-world camera for group photos, and the Live feature for real-time broadcasting. As Posh explained: « People use Zepeto Live broadcasting for different reasons—some to talk and feel connected, others to earn small income from gifts, and some simply to gain popularity. »

User-Created Practices

Role-play and Storymaking — Many young people create short dramas or role-play scenarios inside the app, treating virtual spaces as stages for collective storytelling. As Loeva La Ragione noted: « Players always find new ways to use game spaces. Sometimes they use them for things that were not meant to happen there. »

Reimagining Space — Posh, an early user I interviewed, turned what looked like simple participation into something closer to community leadership. He formed a crew, gave members symbolic roles, and later renamed the group The Power of Users. He said that « Zepeto belongs to its users, not to the company ». His activities blurred the line between play and governance.

Social Affordances and Digital Belonging

Across my fieldwork, what became clear is that Zepeto operates as a social environment where design features themselves become the basis of emotional and collective life. The gestures, poses, and photo tools built into the interface act as social affordances—they invite users to express attention, care, or solidarity through movement and proximity rather than words.

For many young Koreans, these micro-encounters—standing side by side, posing together, waving, or mirroring an action—replace the warmth and responsiveness that are often missing from family or offline networks. Zepeto thus demonstrates how intimacy and belonging in contemporary Korea are not disappearing but relocating—into spaces where design, imagination, and social negotiation converge.

Comparative Analysis: Affordances of Digital Belonging

Affordances of Digital Belonging

Across both KakaoTalk open chat and Zepeto, young Koreans reconfigure the experience of belonging through the interfaces that structure how attention, emotion, and visibility are exchanged. In a Korean society where traditional kinship networks are weakening, these platforms become everyday laboratories for testing new ways of being together.

On KakaoTalk, belonging is performed through language. Short sentences, emojis, and quick replies sustain an ambient rhythm of care. A typing indicator flashes, a « read » mark appears, and in that microsecond of anticipation, a small form of emotional reciprocity takes shape. Each affordance—multi-profile names, emojis, typing indicator, voice rooms—becomes a cue that distributes attention in small, repeatable doses. This might be called textual intimacy: brief, rhythmic, and dialogic.

On Zepeto, the same desire for closeness takes a different form. Here, interaction unfolds through visibility, movement, and shared space. Users express themselves by waving, posing, or synchronizing gestures. The interface choreographs attention rather than conversation—belonging is felt not in dialogue, but in parallel motion and co-presence. This mode resonates with the broader media environment of contemporary Korea, where visual performance often substitutes for verbal exchange. The influence of K-pop is particularly visible: just as K-pop organizes fan participation around synchronized gestures and stylized appearance, Zepeto structures social connection through similar visual and performative cues.

Seen together, these two platforms outline distinct grammars of belonging. KakaoTalk builds warmth through textual exchange; Zepeto constructs it through visibility and shared embodiment. Each one rewires sociability in response to the same absence—the fading presence of family as a site of emotional care.

This dynamic is particularly pronounced in Korea’s social context. The country’s rapid individualization under persistent collectivist norms leaves young people caught between the expectation to belong and the difficulty of doing so. Both KakaoTalk and Zepeto provide low-risk, time-efficient forms of connection that fit the rhythms of hyper-competitive, digitally saturated lives. As Ayoub reflected: « We usually feel joy by talking to each other and playing… sometimes we talk about what’s not going too well in our lives. It’s good to have people to talk to. »

The emergence of Caliverse, a next-generation metaverse platform integrating AI and VR, further extends this trajectory. Built on Unreal Engine 5 with ultra-high-definition real-time 3D graphics, Caliverse pursues a level of visual realism unprecedented in Korean virtual platforms. Yet higher resolution does not necessarily deepen social connection. Simplified environments like Animal Crossing: New Horizons encourage intimacy precisely because their abstraction leaves room for imagination and emotional projection. Whereas KakaoTalk optimized saying and Zepeto optimized showing, emerging platforms like Caliverse aim to optimize sensing—turning digital presence into something continuous and automated.

To compare how each platform structures belonging, I examined six key social affordances—visibility, persistence, scalability, anonymity and identity play, mutual attention, and boundary negotiation. These categories build on the notion of social affordances proposed by boyd (2014), which describe how technical features enable or constrain social interaction.

Conclusion: Redesigning Families, Rewiring Sociability

Redesigning Families, Rewiring Sociability

Before turning to the implications of these findings, it is worth recalling how, for many users, online worlds continue to matter long after their infrastructures begin to decay. The short documentary I Spent 30 Days in a Dead Game – There.com (2023) offers a moving portrait of what keeps people returning to such spaces. In this largely abandoned virtual world, a small group of long-time residents still log in each day. Every object in this environment was once user-made: houses, vehicles, clothing, entire landscapes.

For the remaining community, staying connected inside this fading world is not about nostalgia but about belonging. One participant responds: « It’s like a real world here. You get to know people. There.com to me is just about the people, and it’s always been about the community. »

As researcher Hortense Boulais-Ifrène observed in our interview: « When virtual worlds disappear, people don’t vanish — they migrate. They move together to new platforms, carrying their relationships with them. » She added: « Platforms don’t die because of technology. They die because people move on — they follow their friends. »

I have been interested in how people build communities in digital spaces—how they form friendships, experience belonging, and sustain connection through screens. This thesis began with a simple question: how do young Koreans find new ways of being together when family ties feel distant?

Through two case studies—KakaoTalk Open Chat and Zepeto—this research shows how concrete interface choices shape distinct modes of connection among young Koreans.

On KakaoTalk Open Chat, semi-anonymity and multi-profile settings let users calibrate self-presentation per room. Day-to-day interaction hinges on read receipts, timestamps, typing indicators, and a high volume of stickers/emojis. The Voice Room feature extends this from text to synchronous audio, creating ambient co-presence where a few speak while many listen.

On Zepeto, sociability is spatial and visual. Interaction starts with avatar customization and unfolds in Worlds through proximity, gesture menus, group photos, and Live streams. Fieldwork showed ordinary but repeatable patterns—standing side-by-side, mirroring poses, synchronizing simple actions—that users treat as visible proofs of presence.

Taken together, these findings show that digital intimacy on Korean platforms is closely tied to interface architecture. Both cases demonstrate that design functions not only as a technical layer but as a social infrastructure that determines how connection, attention, and emotional support are produced and maintained online.

In Zepeto you meet people who share the same interests and sometimes you feel emotions you can’t feel with your family
— Posh, Zepeto User

Yet this pattern is not unique to Korea. Ayoub described how he and his friend, now living in different cities, maintain their bond through weekly online play sessions: « We try to play together each Sunday online while calling each other on Discord. It’s like a meeting point per week online. »

This research examined how young Koreans mobilize digital platforms to rebuild forms of sociability that are increasingly absent from family and offline community life. What these findings collectively reveal is a shift in how intimacy and belonging are produced in contemporary Korea. Faced with the erosion of traditional kinship structures, young Koreans do not abandon the idea of togetherness; they reconfigure it through platforms that distribute care across text, image, and gesture. Family, in this sense, is no longer a fixed institution but a pattern of mediated attention—a network of micro-interactions that accumulate meaning over time.

At the same time, these environments are never entirely safe or equal. The same affordances that allow connection can also enable harassment, exclusion, or exploitation. Digital intimacy is always negotiated within systems of power and visibility.

Ultimately, this MA thesis shows that design interfaces play a crucial role in shaping how young Koreans experience belonging and intimacy online. Looking ahead, the findings suggest that future online platforms should focus less on visual realism or algorithmic personalization and more on how design can support reciprocity, empathy, and user agency. The next challenge for designers is to translate social sensitivity into interface design—creating systems that help people not only connect, but genuinely feel connected.

Diploma project

My upcoming diploma project will build directly on the findings of this MA thesis but move from software to hardware. While this research analyzed how digital platforms such as KakaoTalk and Zepeto shape belonging and intimacy through interface design, it did not explore how physical hardware might create similar experiences of connection.

Much of what I studied—typing indicators, read marks, emojis, and avatar gestures—exists within flat screens and depends on constant visibility. These systems allow people to stay connected, yet they also confine interaction to visual feedback loops. I am therefore interested in how relationships between the digital and physical worlds might offer an alternative: how signals, gestures, and materials can work together to make social connection more embodied, less pressured, and more sustainable over time.

Having worked in web development for several years, I am also drawn to the intersection between online infrastructures and tangible media. The project will explore how web-based systems can communicate with physical objects—bridging the networked logic of the web with the sensory immediacy of hardware.

For example, Nintendo’s Wii U and amiibo demonstrate how a physical object—such as tapping a figurine on a console sensor—can link digital identity with real-world interaction by transferring data through NFC technology. These examples show how physical interfaces can extend digital relationships beyond the screen, creating a sense of presence without requiring constant interaction or display.

The diploma project will therefore experiment with ways to connect online environments and physical artifacts through subtle, reciprocal forms of interaction. The goal is not to design another social network, but to explore how tangible interfaces—integrated with web-based systems—can support everyday gestures of recognition and care.

By combining the openness of the web with the material qualities of physical design, the project aims to explore new forms of belonging that bridge digital and physical experience.