Since its launch in 2006, the story-sharing platform Wattpad has become a cultural phenomenon, captivating over 90 million users worldwide with its vast collection of teen romances, romance dramas, and fan fiction. Wattpadders, especially those active on the site during its early days, look back fondly on sporadically updated love stories, cheesy cliffhangers, and heartfelt author’s notes.
Wattpad’s popularity in the Philippines is unmatched, with the country becoming its second-largest market in 2018, boasting seven million monthly users and over 400 million reading minutes. Several Wattpad novels have been adapted into Filipino films and TV shows, with Diary Ng Panget, written by Denny R. (HaveYouSeenThisGirl), standing out as a 2014 blockbuster film that catapulted the JaDine love team into the national spotlight.
However, beneath the surface of these popular adaptations lies a troubling trend. While Wattpad novels tug at our romantic heartstrings, they often romanticize questionable relationship dynamics; a problematic grooming dynamic may be dismissed as an “age-gap” romance, while abusive behavior from a male love interest is excused as part of the “bad boy” trope. Although the platform can evoke a sense of nostalgia among users, Wattpad’s troubling narratives can also normalize harmful behavior under the guise of romance.
Questionable Love Stories
Several Wattpad authors have built massive followings by writing stories that, while captivating, often normalize deeply problematic relationships. One Wattpad author, Filipino writer Jonah Mae Panen Pacala (also known as Jonaxx), has been frequently called out for writing stories that romanticize sexual grooming and incest.
In her Wattpad series Until Trilogy, main characters Elijah and Klare begin as cousins but slowly end up as lovers. It is eventually revealed that Klare isn’t biologically related to Elijah, but readers of the Until Trilogy are still left with a narrative that raises unsettling questions about consent and family dynamics. In Jonaxx’s Costa Leona series, it is heavily implied that the female love interests are underaged while their respective partners are not. “Growing up reading Jonaxx’s [sic] stories to now realizing how sick it was,” says one X user on the Wattpad author. “I can’t even comprehend why Jonaxx still has a lot of readers when [the] majority of her books contain problematic themes and characters,” says another X user.
Reaching out to Wattpadders about their experiences on the platform, it’s clear that problematic tropes extended far beyond the works of Jonaxx. “There are [sic] problematic tropes that I’ve read like lowkey non con [non-consensual] stuff or normalizing getting back together with cheating exes,” says one Wattpadder who goes by Patty A. “It really popularized getting together with villains or bad boys.”
“I think I mostly learned about these tropes through Wattpad, and it gave me a sort of skewed view of what a healthy relationship is,” says another Wattpadder who goes by Jill.
Concerns about young people being exposed to explicit themes in the media are nothing new. Yet, even in 2025, we still haven’t found the right balance between managing minors’ media consumption, and giving them the freedom to explore.
In the case of Wattpad, the platform’s content moderation muddies the waters on what younger users can be exposed to. As long as a Wattpad novel is marked as “mature,” it is allowed to contain explicit scenes with explicit sex, self-harm, or graphic depictions of violence. However (and perhaps paradoxically), Wattpad has the right to remove any content it deems inappropriate, including “pornographic content,” “media displaying self-harm or suicide,” and any violent content “intended to shock or disgust our community.”
While Wattpad has undoubtedly shaped the current landscape of digital storytelling, its impact is not without controversy. The platform has provided a space for countless writers and readers to explore a wide range of narratives; however, many of these same narratives also perpetuate harmful tropes and normalize toxic behaviors under the guise of love, particularly among younger, impressionable audiences. In the end, Wattpad’s immense popularity shouldn’t overshadow the harmful messages it often reinforces about love and relationships.
