In an age where stars’ engagements, divorces, pregnancies and social media breaks are announced across various social media platforms, Zendaya and Tom Holland are among a handful of celebrities that appear to be bucking the trend of extremely online coupledom.

The Golden Globes marked a monumental occasion for “Tomdaya” fans. The Challengers star arrived at the awards ceremony on Jan. 5 without Holland — but instead with a diamond on her left ring finger. Across social media and even inside the event itself, people were curious to learn whether Holland had proposed. TMZ and People confirmed the engagement the following day, attributing the news to sources close to the couple. There was no celebratory Instagram post from either star to announce the news themselves.

For many celebrities, social media has been used as a means of getting ahead of the paparazzi — of staking claim to their narratives and putting speculation to rest. But what happens when stars intentionally keep their romances off the Instagram grid?

“There’s a lot of old-school elegance to keeping your private life private and talking to the press when you are ready in a careful way,” Jane Owen, the founder of Jane Owen Public Relations, told Yahoo Entertainment.

For years, Zendaya and Holland kept their relationship under wraps. The pair first met in 2016 during a chemistry read for Spider-Man: Homecoming before eventually securing starring roles. They went on to play love interests, Holland as the titular superhero and Zendaya as Mary Jane, in two additional installments: Spider-Man: Far From Home (2018) and Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021). The rumor mill hit a fever pitch when Zendaya and Holland were promoting Far From Home, as fans dissected how similar their mannerisms were and how in sync they appeared during press junkets.

Their romance was confirmed with a kiss in 2021, a moment that was captured by paparazzi without their consent.

Three years later, Zendaya and Holland still aren’t flaunting their relationship online. Save for a sweet birthday dedication on Instagram or a few mentions of one another in interviews, they often don’t publicly share more than they’re willing to.

“Parts of my life, I accept, are going to be public. I can’t not be a person and live my life and love the person I love. But also, I do have control over what I choose to share,” Zendaya told Elle in 2023. “It’s about protecting the peace and letting things be your own but also not being afraid to exist. You can’t hide. That’s not fun either. I am navigating it more than ever now.”

“Social media is still a great way for celebrities to put out information they want to,” Owen said. “[But] I think that the worldwide addiction to social media and the pressure to keep up a certain flow of information and content is a lot to deal with.”

Zendaya and Holland aren’t the only famous couple navigating a private romance in the public eye. Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, as well as Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner, seem to be setting similar boundaries when it comes to sharing their relationships online.

Swift, who has been dating Kelce since September 2023, has featured him in just two Instagram posts. Chalamet and Jenner have been linked since April 2023 and have yet to appear on each other’s grids.

That’s not to say these couples aren’t stepping out together and supporting one another’s careers. Swift has been in near-constant attendance at Chiefs games since being linked to Kelce, while Kelce has been to 14 of Swift’s “Eras Tour” dates, and even joined her onstage at Wembley Stadium in London in June 2023. The “Fortnight” singer and Chiefs tight end were spotted dining around New York during the holiday season, and the paparazzi were there to capture their every reservation.

Jenner and Chalamet made their public debut at a Beyoncé concert in September 2023, and went on to attend the U.S. Open and 2024 Golden Globes together, among other events.

Jenner also joined Chalamet at the afterparty following the premiere of A Complete Unknown in Los Angeles in December 2024, and was his date to the 2025 Golden Globes, where he was nominated for Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Motion Picture — Drama. They did not walk the red carpet together.

These couples aren’t hiding their relationships from the public — they just don’t care to post about it online. But how much a celebrity chooses to share online can also affect how close their fans feel toward them.

“We maintain our relationships through reciprocal disclosure,” Bradley Bond, a communications professor at the University of California, San Diego, told Yahoo. “Our real-life friendships we maintain by sharing information about ourselves. When we share about ourselves, we typically encourage the other person subconsciously to share about themselves. Now, parasocial relationships are one-sided. We’re not necessarily sharing with Zendaya, but we’re waiting for that bit of information and those disclosures.”

There’s a spectrum of attachment a fan has to a celebrity, Bond explained. Fandom, or “liking” a celebrity or the fictional character they play, is at one end of the spectrum. On the other end of the spectrum is what Bond describes as a personal relationship or the feeling that “I’m connected to [this celebrity] in some way.” Celebrity worship is fandom at its most extreme. This is when an attachment to a celebrity negatively “interferes with one’s daily routine,” Bond said.

When fans don’t receive the information they’re waiting for, it’s possible their parasocial relationship may weaken.

“We know they’re in a relationship, but [if] neither one of them [is] sharing details of that relationship in a public forum, then it can make us feel less connected,” he said of couples like Zendaya and Holland. “A lot of times, fans will say that they felt they have the right to this disclosure. … When you don’t get it, it can feel like what we refer to as an expectancy violation.”

Not every famous couple prefers to be offline. Selena Gomez and her fiancé, music producer Benny Blanco, with whom she’s been linked since June 2023, often share aspects of their relationship on Instagram. The Emilia Pérez actress first posted a photo of Blanco on Instagram in October 2023. In December of that year, she confirmed she was seeing Blanco and shared a photo of them kissing on her Instagram Stories. Since then, she’s posted regularly of or with Blanco on her Instagram, including the news of their engagement in December 2024.

Gomez’s willingness to share may make her a more favorable celebrity in the eyes of some fans.

“If a celebrity couple is pretty open about their relationship, then that just gives their audience more information,” Bond said. “Those who do have a parasocial bond can utilize that information to strengthen the parasocial relationship or to diminish it.”

Still, fans tend to maintain their parasocial connection to a celebrity like Zendaya, for instance, despite how private she is about her relationship with Holland.

“It’s not like you’ve invested time in going to their milestone events and buying them bridal shower gifts and things like in our real-life relationships,” Bond explained. “Most fans of somebody like [Swift] or Zendaya are unlikely to dissolve those parasocial bonds simply because they don’t know enough about their romantic relationship. That’s not why they perceived this close connection in the first place.”

There’s often the expectation that a celebrity must be willing to share the most private aspects of their lives in a public forum because they’re public figures, but even the most social-media-savvy stars have boundaries.

Whether it’s an Instagram-wide announcement or no announcement at all, how much or how little a celebrity wants to disclose about their relationship is entirely up to them. Maybe we should be happy that they choose to share anything at all.