The rise of the ‘teen wife’: When young marriage becomes social media content
<p><strong>The teenage wife or young wife lifestyle is gaining momentum worldwide. But beneath the apparent domestic bliss lies a more complicated story – of girlhood giving way to marriage, of social media turning private choices into public performance, and of boundaries blurring between consent, vulnerability, and agency.</strong></p><figure><img src="https://imgproxy.citrusreader.com/BP_Nceos4-eTJGeSqo7uVkhtil_7Cqqo_BrvlUPkenc/raw:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9tZWRpYS5hc3NldHR5cGUuY29tL25ld3NsYXVuZHJ5LzIwMjYtMDgtMTMvbmdmbjRxYXIvdGhlbmV3c21pbnV0ZTIwMjYtMDgtMTE5YXJrZjVrMVdoYXRzQXBwLUltYWdlLTIwMjYtMDgtMTEtYXQtMTUuNTIuNDguYXZpZj9hdXRvPWZvcm1hdCUyQ2NvbXByZXNzJmZpdD1tYXgmZHByPTEuMCZmb3JtYXQ9d2VicA" alt referrerpolicy="no-referrer"><figcaption>Representative image of a young woman filming herself (Nikhil Sekhar)</figcaption></figure><p>“I was 15 and Amal was 21 when we felt a romantic spark. For three years, we continued to be in a relationship, but my parents went to the police and tried to separate us. It was at that point that I decided to elope with him,” says Pooja, who hails from Kerala, in a recent <ins><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykoFu8ZvTec&t=107s">interview.</a></ins> </p><p>Pooja, now 19, married Amal last year. The couple say they are sure of each other and the life they have chosen. Pooja eloped from her grandmother’s house, where her parents had put her up as she was writing her school exams. She says her family was also planning to send her away from Kerala for studies so that she would not be able to see Amal.</p><p>“Amal and I lived in the same neighbourhood. We met at a wedding. He saw me, and then he tried to pursue me. He is good-looking and persistent. I felt I would be happy,” Pooja is seen saying in several interviews.</p><p>The couple was apprehensive about speaking to <em>TNM</em>, worried that extensive coverage might adversely impact them. However, they say, if Pooja’s family had not threatened them, they may not have married so soon. They now live at Amal’s home with his parents.</p><p>The couple has a YouTube channel with over 90.6k subscribers. The first video on the channel, uploaded a year ago, is titled ‘Me and my child wife’.</p><p>The channel has over 290 videos, including content that showcases their domestic life, outings with Amal’s family, small celebrations, and more. In some videos, Pooja cooks, reiterating how she does not know how to cook at all. Amal reassures her, saying she is still young and will pick up.</p><p>Of late, after the couple went viral, Pooja has been doing paid promotional videos where she reviews skincare and makeup products.</p><p>For Amal and Pooja, YouTube videos and Instagram reels are avenues to earn, considering that she has just joined college this year, and they are trying to find a financial footing. However, Pooja’s is not an isolated case of a ‘child wife’ making money off social media.</p><p>Spend enough time on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube, and it becomes apparent that the teenage wife or young wife lifestyle is gaining momentum worldwide, and in India too. There are videos of several young wives like Pooja, who are seen cooking in school or college uniforms, making pregnancy announcements before college graduations, and declaring that life’s tribulations cannot ever break their rebellious love for each other.</p><p>There is something deceptively ordinary about these videos. But beneath the easy intimacy and the apparent domestic bliss lies a more complicated story – of girlhood giving way to marriage, of social media turning private choices into public performance, and of boundaries blurring between consent, vulnerability, and agency.</p><p>The teen wife phenomenon on social media is a subset of the traditional wife or trad wife movement, which encourages women to go back to traditional gender roles like birthing, nurturing, care-giving, and so on.</p><p>However, the teen/young wife conversation is more complex in the Indian context. The same imagery of the teen wife as it exists in the West exists against an entirely different backdrop here.</p><p>The conversation here is not just about young women being swept into a global conservative gimmick, but about agency and what it means to make life-altering choices before life itself has had a chance to unfold.</p><figure><img src="https://imgproxy.citrusreader.com/NIHWDCufBD06f8Rqh7LdaqW5qUZfMaVRVLiNFOG6tDA/raw:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9tZWRpYS5hc3NldHR5cGUuY29tL25ld3NsYXVuZHJ5LzIwMjYtMDgtMTMvZ3h2cmY2ZG8vdGhlbmV3c21pbnV0ZTIwMjYtMDgtMTF2bWVvMXcyZVdoYXRzQXBwLUltYWdlLTIwMjYtMDgtMTEtYXQtMTUuNTIuNDcuYXZpZj9hdXRvPWZvcm1hdCUyQ2NvbXByZXNzJmZvcm1hdD13ZWJw" alt referrerpolicy="no-referrer"><figcaption>Pooja and Amal (Source: Instagram)</figcaption></figure><p><strong>Inside the ‘teen wife’ lifestyle</strong></p><p>“Spend the day with me as a 19-year-old wife,” says Tristin-Grace Rowell, as she wakes up from a messy bed, sunlight haloing the back of her head. Her husband, Jackson, who is the same age as she is, makes an appearance in the background, as if caught unaware amidst domestic ease. The American influencer couple’s life is on display as if it is already figured out – with a quiet confidence unique to young love.</p><p>The couple has 121k followers on Instagram and mostly features content about their daily life, how they manage money, their house, and more. Tristin also posts about skincare, make-up, and outfit styling.</p><p>Savanna Faith Stone, a trad wife influencer who is often called the “female Andrew Tate”, says that she married her husband at 19, and that choosing a conservative life has only made her feel more empowered. Tristin and other teen/young wife influencers living in the West follow the same pattern. </p><p>For them, the lifestyle is a conduit to both financial rewards and a ‘return to femininity’ advocated by biblical morality. Most trad wives cook from scratch, claim to have no house help, deliver children in their homes without modern medical assistance, ‘obey’ their husbands, and are against using contraception. They frame their lives as fulfilling, ideal even.</p><p>The teen/young wife, a young offshoot of the trad wife, embodies traditional femininity, domestic fulfilment, and devotion to family, but at a far earlier stage of life. If the trad wife asks women to reconsider modern adulthood, the teen wife skips over that phase of introspection altogether.</p><p>In India, however, teen wife/young wife influencers are more diverse. But they all pivot towards the same economic and social model.</p><p>Young wife influencer Tanishkka Tiwari, who is now 22, recently celebrated her third wedding anniversary. Her YouTube channel, The Epicsodes, has over 4.6k subscribers.</p><p>In a video from 10 months ago, titled ‘A day in the life of a 21-year-old married girl’, Tanishkka is seen spending time at her residence while her husband is out. In the evening, once he returns, the couple go to get an anti-rabies vaccine, which Tanishkka calls a “soulmate” thing.</p><figure><img src="https://imgproxy.citrusreader.com/JKHOZ-suGrDUel4isswW20cYrI6vFwPQi-dNiQzHdvA/raw:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9tZWRpYS5hc3NldHR5cGUuY29tL25ld3NsYXVuZHJ5LzIwMjYtMDgtMTMvdjI0c3RkcWwvdGhlbmV3c21pbnV0ZTIwMjYtMDgtMTF3dzl6NWl3c1doYXRzQXBwLUltYWdlLTIwMjYtMDgtMTEtYXQtMTYuMDIuMTEuYXZpZj9hdXRvPWZvcm1hdCUyQ2NvbXByZXNzJmZvcm1hdD13ZWJw" alt referrerpolicy="no-referrer"><figcaption>Tanishkka and her husband at their 3rd wedding anniversary (Source: Tanishkka's Instagram handle)</figcaption></figure><p>In Kerala, social media influencer Devapriya’s marriage created considerable clamour. A law student with over 49k followers on Instagram and 55.5k subscribers on <ins><a href="https://www.youtube.com/@Devapriya_mp">YouTube,</a></ins> she married Jishnu K Manoj, a 31-year-old psychologist, when she was 19 years old. Her family did not accept her relationship or marriage, citing that she was too young to marry and preferring that she study and build a career.</p><p>In a question-and-answer session with her YouTube subscribers, Devapriya says that the couple had their own “circumstances” due to which they got married and that they do not wish to place themselves as an ideal or a model for others. However, Devapriya, too, like Tanishkka and others, posts videos of her cooking, her domestic activities, and so on.</p><p>Parallelly, there is a ‘reaction economy’ of YouTubers, making videos responding to the lives of people like Devapriya who marry young and monetise their lifestyle online. While some of these YouTubers take a puritan standpoint, calling the couple out, others cite how marriages with a huge age gap between spouses are normal, citing celebrity couples like Fahadh Faasil and Nazriya Nazim, for example.</p><p>Whatever the context, though, like in the West, young Indian wife influencers also follow a moral code. </p><p>Tanishkka, for example, cooks, cleans, prays, and plays the ultimate good wife and good daughter-in-law. She also observes fasts on days considered auspicious in Hinduism. She, too, like Pooja and others, promotes make-up and skincare through paid partnerships with brands.</p><p>While women like Tanishkka are ‘married off’ by their parents at a young age, several other young wives, especially those like Pooja, who hail from economically and socially marginalised backgrounds, operate in a different reality.</p><p>Anamika Vishnu, a young wife influencer from Kerala, for example, got married in her late teens. Her husband, Vishnu, is the son of Grija, who runs the Jeevamatha Karunya Bhavan orphanage in Theppupara. Anamika was an inmate of the orphanage.</p><p>The couple got married in November 2024 and has a one-year-old daughter.</p><figure><img src="https://imgproxy.citrusreader.com/JUgehwzmJIx19HMgYjDYy5KPMxrtuhVzifxs49sCslU/raw:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9tZWRpYS5hc3NldHR5cGUuY29tL25ld3NsYXVuZHJ5LzIwMjYtMDgtMTMvZnRnazA5ZmYvdGhlbmV3c21pbnV0ZTIwMjYtMDgtMTFrOWxwdzBqMFdoYXRzQXBwLUltYWdlLTIwMjYtMDgtMTEtYXQtMTYuMTcuMjQuYXZpZj9hdXRvPWZvcm1hdCUyQ2NvbXByZXNzJmZvcm1hdD13ZWJw" alt referrerpolicy="no-referrer"><figcaption>Vishnu and Anamika (Source: Couple's Instagram page)</figcaption></figure><p>Girija explains in an online interview that children admitted to orphanages under the Child Welfare Commission (CWC) must be moved out once they turn 18. She adds that once Anamika turned 18 and it was time to shift her, she asked if she would like to marry her son Vishnu. Anamika had no objections and the couple was soon married.</p><p>Anamika has wholly embraced her marital life and has been actively broadcasting it through YouTube vlogs and Instagram reels. But certainty in the present does not erase the questions that surround a marriage begun so young. </p><p>On the whole, data from the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation shows that over the last few years, the average age of marriage for women in India has increased across both rural and urban areas. The latest National Family Health Survey <ins><a href="https://www.nfhsiips.in/nfhsuser/assets/National%20Family%20Health%20Survey%20(NFHS-6)%202023-2024%20Fact%20Sheets.pdf">data</a></ins> also shows that, on average, the number of women marrying before 18 years has significantly dropped from 23.3 percent to 20.1 percent.</p><p>This means that an increasing number of women are choosing to marry later. But when it comes to the niche of young adult women who choose to marry in their teenage years, that choice is informed by several factors. </p><p>The increased visibility and economic model offered by the online content creator market is pushing several such young women to embrace and perform traditional femininity.</p><p><strong>Power imbalance, stability, mental health</strong></p><p>“Don’t you also have a mother and a sister at home? The man in the photo is my husband, not my elder brother. Please stop commenting unkindly,” reads a comment from young wife Vismaya Sibin on the <ins><a href="https://www.instagram.com/vismaya_sibin_?igsh=aW5kbW5nbGlsbHln">Instagram</a></ins> post in which she announced her pregnancy.</p><p>Vismaya married Sibin, whose Instagram bio says he is 23 years old, in October 2025. Vismaya is now five months pregnant. The couple’s Instagram comments are filled with all kinds of reactions. While some mockingly ask if they posted the pregnancy video during school lunch break, considering that they both still look like children, others take harsher jibes.</p><p>Dr B Subha Sri, a gynaecologist and Clinic Director of the Rural Women’s Social Education Centre (RUWSEC), a grassroots NGO in Tamil Nadu, says that it is worrying when young girls do not just give up education for marriage but also get pregnant early on.</p><p>“I am all for autonomy, sexual and other kinds. But it has to be an informed choice. The question is, at such a young age, how informed is this choice? Young girls and boys get into such situations because they do not have any other information. They marry, and the natural progression they tilt towards is childbirth. Biologically, it is possible, sure. But are they prepared to parent a child, or even provide well for the child?” she asks, while speaking to <em>TNM</em>.</p><p>These are important decisions to be made, Dr Subha Sri says, adding that individual autonomy has to come within a context of information, adequate support, and an awareness of the other options available in a situation.</p><p>“I really think there is a problem in saying this is a choice. This choice argument is something we increasingly see in cases where the woman has consequences. First of all, how sure are the partners of each other? And even if their love makes them feel sure, what about the economic, emotional, and mental health impact of pregnancy and family rearing?” Dr Subha Sri points out.</p><p>When asked about the presence of a certain kind of grooming in marriages involving teenage girls, Dr Subha Sri says that it is tricky. </p><p>“There is definitely a power imbalance in terms of gender. I personally would not say there is grooming if the age difference between the spouses is not significant. But when the boy is 25 or more and the girl is still in her late teens, we should worry. He has all the resources, social and others, in his hands. When we add patriarchal conditioning and a gender discriminatory social context to it, we get what we can say is grooming. The girl will definitely be moulded to live the way he likes, become who he wants,” she explains.</p><p>The actual power imbalance, Dr Subha Sri says, is about how the young man can convince the girl.</p><p>She notes from experience of having dealt with several young women’s medical cases that the ultimate power of convincing lies with the husband because the girl trusts him to choose what is right for her. “He can make her believe that possession or even abuse is a form of love, and that real fulfilment lies in nurturing a family, whatever the personal cost for her,” she says.</p><p>She adds that very rarely has she seen young girls and their spouses settle into a marriage founded on equality and democracy. This, she says, is an outcome of multiple factors like financial instability, lack of emotional maturity, isolation from family and society, and internalising abusive relationships that these young adults grow up seeing at home.</p><figure><img src="https://imgproxy.citrusreader.com/w_kqeho0Na81ShofMSPaKbXgcqreshadyAkhDDHT-bA/raw:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9tZWRpYS5hc3NldHR5cGUuY29tL25ld3NsYXVuZHJ5LzIwMjYtMDgtMTMvMmo3c3hmNTgvdGhlbmV3c21pbnV0ZTIwMjYtMDgtMTF1a2swMWRhaldoYXRzQXBwLUltYWdlLTIwMjYtMDgtMTEtYXQtMTYuMjAuNDUuYXZpZj9hdXRvPWZvcm1hdCUyQ2NvbXByZXNzJmZvcm1hdD13ZWJw" alt referrerpolicy="no-referrer"><figcaption>Vismaya and Sibin in an Instagram post about her pregnancy ( Source: Couple's Instagram page)</figcaption></figure><p><strong>What does staying back offer?</strong></p><p>“My parents were separated very early on. My father had relationships with other women, and I became a mother to my younger siblings at an early age. When I met a man who encouraged me to live my dreams, I felt confident,” says Monalisa Bhonsle to <em>TNM</em>. </p><p>Monalisa, the viral young tribal woman from the Prayag Maha Kumbh Mela, now in her late teenage years, married Farman Khan, a Muslim man whom she met on a film set. While she is a teen wife now, her choice to become one was not driven by absolute free will. Neither was her virality.</p><p>The same is the case with Pooja, and perhaps even Anamika, who become young wives. While some of them run away from home with a lover to escape family toxicity and caste/class-based objections from the community, others feel that it is a ticket to a freer life.</p><p>When romantic love itself remains contested across the country, trapped in caste, religion, and class, young people power through a web of expectations about community, honour, and belonging. Several young men in romantic relationships with women who are not yet 18 years old are booked by the police under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act at the behest of the girl’s parents.</p><p>While some of these cases are motivated by sheer disapproval of the man, others are motivated by caste differences. And when young women decide to choose marriage, the internet becomes a means for financial sustenance, the traction a byproduct.</p><p>Dr Anbu Durai, psychiatrist and Executive Director of clinical services at Chennai-based NGO The Banyan, says that if we look deeply, there is no real objection in India against women being married off young per se. The problem only arises when she defies family or community norms.</p><p>“Even if not completely mature, teenagers are going through hormonal readiness. Now, if you look at nature, there is no clear age barrier to mating and reproduction. In several primitive societies, girls are married off early. Even major religions encourage early marriage to prevent the girls from being ‘corrupted’. So generally, it is not like there is a groundswell against marrying off a girl young, except in middle and upper classes perhaps,” he explains.</p><p>What Dr Anbu is saying is that most girls are raised in India with the end goal of them being married off at a certain age. Therefore, girls internalise this destiny, and he says many young adults have told him that if they are to eventually marry, why not do it right away.</p><p>“This logic may make older adults or parents frown, but what we do not realise as a society is that we are grooming young girls to pivot towards the idea of eventually playing gender roles and conforming to the same morality. But does hormonal readiness mean they are equipped to tackle the weight of life? Rather, are we addressing puberty and sexual readiness in a way that helps young adults regulate their emotions and make more informed choices?” he asks.</p><p>The answer is, unfortunately, negative. Though most schools claim to have some kind of sex education on the curriculum, the topic is still taboo. Further, sex education is perceived to be about the mating process, which several medical professionals have squarely rejected time and again. </p><p>“Sex education covers much more, like bodily autonomy, emotional maturity, social aspects and so on. Sex education must start with hygiene, self-identity, how you relate to other people, who is sexually allowed to come close and the like,” Dr Anbu explains.</p><p>The social models young adults have are also equally problematic. Popular culture, for example, including mainstream films, popularises young love and romanticises marriages where the man is centred. Young love is often pictured with a certain rebellious charm, making it more tempting for a teenager who is at the cusp of a hormonal surge and a social setup that offers no leniency. </p><p>Moreover, a counter question that several teen wives in India ask is about the benefits of staying with their natal families, when they feel they have found lovers who appear more liberal, promising a future devoid of the restrictions they face from their families.</p><p>Data from the National Crime Records Bureau consistently shows that families are sites of extreme violence. Children and women, both young and old, often face domestic abuse, sexual violence, and exploitation from the male members in their own families. Several girls also grow up watching the patriarch exercise control over their lives and choices, making them want to escape the moment they get a chance.</p><p>“I married a man who tells me I can be anything I want to be. In my family and even my village, girls are not even sent to school. But Farman encouraged me to study, to pursue my own joys. Back home, I would have been thrust into the same fate as my mother: a young wife at the disposal of her husband’s whims. But now that weight has been lifted off my chest,” says Monalisa.</p><p>She has a very valid point. That is what makes the teen wife phenomenon difficult to criticise from a moral high ground.</p><p>Most of us may be tempted to write teen wives off or even predict that their marriages are doomed. But there is a question we must answer: what alternative is the conventional family setup offering women torn between the fleeting audacity to run away with a lover and the exhaustion of staying back?</p><p>However, going by the same data, which says that violence within families is rampant, these young wives may be headed towards similar cycles of abuse that they tried to escape. But the entrapment may be hard to see at first, through the rose-tinted glasses of love. And for several of these couples, things might just work out fine.</p><p>The scenario is further complicated by the internet, which now allows teen wives to find a community and even praise from conservative echo chambers that laud their ‘return to femininity’.</p><figure><img src="https://imgproxy.citrusreader.com/Z2cpw1zxOo4FxfEgv5MnuU2lk5hU8UzBBw7RQAyEP18/raw:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9tZWRpYS5hc3NldHR5cGUuY29tL25ld3NsYXVuZHJ5LzIwMjYtMDgtMTMvaGxvMDZ2ejUvdGhlbmV3c21pbnV0ZTIwMjYtMDYtMjlhaGV2c2JqZG1haW4taW1hZ2UuanBnLTEuYXZpZj9hdXRvPWZvcm1hdCUyQ2NvbXByZXNzJmZvcm1hdD13ZWJw" alt referrerpolicy="no-referrer"><figcaption>Monalisa Bhosle and her husband, Farman Khan, during an exclusive interview with TNM.</figcaption></figure><p><strong>Social media and the semblance of normalcy</strong></p><p>While most teen wife influencers in the West are propelled by a voluntary urge to document their lives on social media and monetise them, in India, as mentioned earlier, it is more complex. While some teen/young wives are proud to showcase their lives, others turn to the internet out of a lack of economic options.</p><p>In the case of Pooja and Amal, neither of them had YouTube channels or brand collaborations before they became viral following their marriage. Now, they can monetise their content through product promotions and their social media content. This applies to most other ‘viral’ teen wives and their spouses.</p><p>“The teens and early adulthood are also a time when critical thinking develops, and avenues for skills to evolve are present. With the general unemployment and economic duress, finding jobs that pay enough with basic degrees or less is tedious. But the internet swoops in like a saviour here for many,” says Dr Anbu.</p><p>This not only gives them financial empowerment, but also makes them feel that they have made the right choice because people recognise them, and several internet users even appreciate them.</p><p>Imposing restrictions on such content is a slippery slope that would spill into the territory of internet censorship and moral policing. The solution, both Dr Subha Sri and Dr Anbu say, lies in building a better social fabric that moulds emotionally stable, self-aware young people.</p><p>“The solution has to be multi-layered and has to start at schools. Sex education, a recognition of what teenagers go through, conversations on desire and how to regulate emotions, and a good vision for their own individual futures are the key. This is so obvious, yet we keep failing to invest in such social engineering,” says Dr Anbu.</p><p>Dr Subha Sri adds that popular culture, especially films, also must assume some responsibility in not normalising toxicity or gift-wrapping control as love.</p><p>Perhaps, the most uncomfortable truth about the teen wife phenomenon is that it does not fit neatly into the binary of black or white.</p><p>It is neither wholly a story of empowerment nor entirely one of victimhood. It is a story of young people trying to carve out lives within social structures that reward regressive ideals while also criticising them for it.</p><p><em>This report was <ins><a href="https://www.thenewsminute.com/news/the-rise-of-the-teen-wife-when-young-marriage-becomes-social-media-content">republished</a></ins> from The News Minute as part of The News Minute-Newslaundry alliance.</em></p>