Summer Clayton may not have children in real life, but he’s a “proud dad” to 2.8 million people on TikTok. Every week, he sits down to dinner and a virtual chat with his “kids.” He looks into the camera with empathy and tells them he’s proud of them. He teaches them how to shave and reminds them it’s OK to feel pain when life hurts. Some days, he prays with them.

Clayton, a civilian fitness trainer at Columbus Air Force Base in northeastern Mississippi, is not a therapist or a life coach. He’s also only 26 and has no kids. To some, his one-way conversations may seem silly. But his compassion and charisma come through in the TikTok videos. These videos have struck a chord among people who need a father figure or just someone who appears to listen to their troubles.

“There’s a lot of great memories that I pull from in my childhood, but there’s also these deficits that I don’t want other people to experience, whether it’s the feeling of sitting alone in the schoolyard when I was younger or just not having that relationship with my dad that I wanted,” Clayton says about his approach to the videos.

“It allows me to practice what it means to be nonjudgmental and to be kind.” Clayton is a health buff with a bachelor’s degree in corporate fitness and a master’s in kinesiology. He loves lifting weights, taking photos, and cooking when he’s not working at the base or making his videos.

@yourprouddadHappy Friday❤️♬ gymnopédie no.1 – Edits

He started posting inspirational and how-to videos on TikTok in late 2020, prompting followers to call him “dad jokingly.” His first video to go viral was a shaving how-to — a response to a follower who sent him a message asking, ‘Hey Dad, can you teach me how to shave?”

The video blew up, earning him tens of thousands of new fans within hours. Now he goes by “yourprouddad” on TikTok and Instagram, where he has an additional 68,000 followers. From there, his videos have morphed into various recurring series, including his popular “Dinner With Dad,” in which Clayton sets down two plates of food — one for him and one for his virtual “kid.”

With a big smile, he quickly breaks down what’s on the dinner plate. Sometimes, he blesses the food. Other times, he digs right in. Almost always, he asks, “How was your day?”

Clayton is part of a growing cadre of online surrogate dads, including Rob Kenney of the “Dad, How Do I?” YouTube series and Bo Petterson’s DadAdviceFromBo on TikTok. They provide fatherly advice, how-to instructions, moral support, and dad jokes. Clayton, who wants to have a child of his own one day, recognizes that the responsibilities of a virtual father figure don’t come close to those of a real dad.

Clayton also shared that he feels pressured to help everyone. He gets thousands of messages daily asking for advice; However, he’s there to give his virtual children emotional support for as long as possible.