Coronation Street's Ryan Connor is worried that he has lost Daisy Midgeley forever, with his loneliness prompting a descent into steroid addiction and an x-rated photos account.

The ITV show is the latest soap to air a dark side of social media storyline, this time focussing on acid attack survivor Ryan's (Ryan Prescott) growing reliance on validation from a fan account.

Ryan has set up the intimate shots account detailing his bodybuilding, which has seen him abusing steroids and setting up risky one-to-one chats with strangers online as a way of boosting his profile.

But actor Ryan has told how his character's struggles with PTSD after the acid attack and loneliness at Daisy (Charlotte Jordan) moving in with Daniel Osbourne (Rob Mallard) has made his addictions worse.

He said of Daisy moving in with fiance Daniel: "To be honest he's completely heartbroken. He doesn’t have Daisy any more, Peter and Carla don’t really want him living with them after his behaviour recently, his mum's not there.

"His relationship with Alya has kind of fizzled out to nothing much at all so there's very few people in his life that he actually has a relationship with. He's just so isolated.

"He spends a lot of time by himself, a lot of time on his phone and on the computer and a lot of time avoiding social situations. I think the more and more he gets into his denial stage of delusion, the more he's feeling that loneliness, so he's still trying to reach out and hold on to those relationships that he has."

Ryan suffered severe burns to his face while trying to protect Daisy from an acid attack by stalker Justin on the day she was supposed to marry Daniel.

Daisy has suffered with guilt over the attack and the pair had grown very close, but now she has decided to move forward with Daniel again.

Ryan said: "With Daisy he is very, very aware that he knows that she's engaged. That it’s probably never going to happen for him and Daisy, but hearing about Daisy and Daniel moving in together and having each other is hard for him.

"When you've experienced such a traumatic event with someone it binds you to each other, there is an unspoken bond and it is confusing his feelings."

The storyline is set to take an even darker turn when the barman begins suffering heart palpitations after a run because of his steroid use.

Ryan is on a long road of recovery from the acid attack and actor Ryan explained that getting adoration from strangers online was a confidence boost for him after everything that had happened.

He said: "The demand of more followers and more content and needing to go home and be in his bedroom in order to shoot, the more that demand goes up, the less time he actually has to commit to working on those social elements of his life that he should be working on.

"You see everywhere today, especially with the younger generation, everyone's getting their dopamine fix from ‘likes’."

He added: "He can't see a reality moving forward. He can't see what that is and I think that's the problem. That's why he's allowed himself to get so lost in the fitness and so lost in the gratification of strangers' comments, because he can't define who he is supposed to be within his community or himself within his family or society in general."

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