Grieving adults are turning to a Muppet for comfort on social media. Is that a good thing?
Kevin Maimann | CBC News | Posted: October 24, 2024 10:21 PM | Last Updated: October 25
Sesame Street's Elmo, actor Andrew Garfield discuss grief, bringing flood of comments
Elmo is becoming something of an online therapist for adults who have fond memories of the fuzzy red Sesame Street Muppet from childhood.
Elmo's official X social media account shared a clip last week of a conversation on the children's program between the Muppet character and actor Andrew Garfield about grief, in which Garfield shares that he's been missing his mom, who died in 2019.
The post on X triggered an outpouring of more than 1,000 comments, with users saying they were brought to tears and sharing their own stories of loss and grief. This echoed an Elmo post from January, when the account asked people how they were doing and was flooded with replies.
Therapists say that while the grief video and some of the ensuing interactions were touching, seeing adults pour their hearts out to a Muppet's social media page is a concerning sign.
In the video, Garfield, who's currently starring in the movie We Live in Time, says it's "OK to miss somebody" because it means you really loved that person, adding that he's happy to have so many positive memories of his mother.
"Who knew I needed this?" one user shared in the comments on X, formerly Twitter. "It was just the anniversary of losing my dad a few days ago and man do I miss him."
"i haven't lost my parents but i'm 5 years into the grieving process of my significant other," another wrote. "I really appreciate this."
The official Sesame Street account chimed in with a link containing resources to help children deal with grief.
The overwhelming response was reminiscent of a January post in which Elmo innocently asked, "How is everybody doing?" and saw his comment section filled with people saying they were, in fact, not doing well at all.
"Every morning, I cannot wait to go back to sleep," one user wrote in response to the January post. "Every Monday, I cannot wait for Friday to come. Every single day and every single week for life."
More support needed in real world: therapist
Lindsey Thomson, a psychotherapist and director of national advocacy with the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association, said when she was growing up, Sesame Street provided a supportive, non-judgmental learning environment.
"I think for so many generations, Elmo has been this very approachable, friendly, compassionate character that just connects on such a deep level," she said.
But underneath that nostalgic comfort is the darker truth that people still don't feel they can open up to those who are close to them — or worry that if they do, they might be a burden to others, Thomson said.
"I think people might be latching on to that because potentially they don't have that type of support in their life currently."
When it comes to seeking professional help, Thomson said many people either can't afford it or run into excessive wait times for mental health services — something she called a "chronic" issue in Canada.
She said taboos still exist around discussing death and grief in particular, which often leads grieving people to isolate themselves.
Expressing pain in a 'social media vacuum'
Jonathan Shedler, a psychologist and a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, said there is "something very sad" about adults reaching out to Elmo online.
It speaks to an alienation and fragmentation in society, he said, where a lot of people are suffering, and yet there doesn't seem to be room for these conversations in real life.
"People are expressing their pain into kind of a social media vacuum," Shedler said. "There's nobody on the other end."
LISTEN | How to deal with grief:
A rise in loneliness and social isolation has been well documented for years, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, and a 2021 American study found that people had fewer close friendships than they used to, talked to their friends less often and relied less on their friends for personal support.
Shedler said this speaks to a broader cultural movement, driven in part by social media, that has blurred the distinction between appearance and substance — leading people to turn to "the appearance of connection" in place of real human connection.
That can lead to parasocial online relationships with celebrities — or in the case of Elmo, a Muppet — that aren't reciprocated in meaningful ways.
While the conversations in Elmo's comment section might seem sweet and reassuring, Shedler said the hard truth is that loving platitudes exchanged between strangers online mean "literally nothing" in reality.
"Being told that you're loved and you're cared about by a stranger is really not the same experience as being told by somebody in your life with whom you have an ongoing and meaningful relationship that they love and care about you," he said.
"I think we get in trouble as soon as we confuse the one for the other, and we think that the parasocial relationship is somehow a stand-in for a real relationship. That's not the cure, that's the disease."