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machado: #grieftok has become a subgenre on tiktok for processing loss. but is it good for us?

some experts say that putting our trauma online for all to see can help us to work through our emotions and get support, but it can also hurt our mental health.

by lisa machado

apr 17 2023

6 minute read

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is social media the healthiest way to move through grief?

i have been spending some time trying to figure out the murky social media caves that my kids hang out in, namely tiktok.

from the very first click, it all felt wrong. tiktok — which is essentially a short-video app — apparently has a superpower-strength ability to know what it is that i want to see, but since i hadn’t posted anything myself, or liked or commented on anyone else’s posts, the algorithm took a guess. both oddly and shockingly, the first bunch of videos my phone served up featured a whole whack of bare-butted young women gyrating to 80s music (where were their mothers?) and a sprinkling of intermittent yell-y clips from middle-aged women standing in white, spotless kitchens with marble countertops, sipping from giant wine glasses while ignoring desperate calls from their children.

“it just doesn’t know what you are interested in yet,” my 15-year-old son said soothingly. this, after he admitted that he sees that stuff too, but he doesn’t have an account, choosing instead to “drop in once in awhile.” his advice to get past the sludge was to just keep swiping — fast.

so, not quite ready to give up, i posted a couple of videos to hopefully nudge the all-knowing algorithm in the right direction. very conscious of the fact that i was building a persona for a platform that quite honestly scares me, i chose my themes carefully, keeping the focus on me and the things that straddled my personal and professional life. i didn’t want anything mom-related, or tied to alcohol or middle-aged-woman-angst. instead, i went for poking fun at being a patient and the weird dynamic between patients and doctors, with a touch of serious commentary around advocacy. (if you want to check it out, go to iamlisa_machado.)

then things got so much worse. suddenly, the shiny, impossibly smooth butt cheeks slid over to make way for countless videos of people who were filming their last days in hospital beds, attached to machines and surrounded by crying loved ones. all of this was accompanied by heart-wrenching vocals (at the time of writing, the trending one was country singer scotty mccreery’s five more minutes — bet you can’t not cry). others referenced suicide, with video creators using text to describe grainy videos that showed their person laughing and happy, along with tags like, #mybrotherunalived, #mentalhealthkills, #iwishiknewiwouldntseeyouagain. (the hashtag #unalive became a thing a few years ago as creators sought ways to discuss suicide without using the word, which would risk getting their account shut down for inappropriate content.)

there’s no question that seeing these images repeatedly had a negative effect. they made me feel anxious, nauseous, and perhaps not completely surprising, made me want to grab my kids with desperation, squeeze them tight and never let them go.

at the time of writing, #grieftok had 794.3 million views.

as my minutes on tiktok passed, i learned to swipe at lightening speed with the first hint of a sad song, and i posted more videos. the algorithm tide turned just slightly to delightful videos of pigs and puppies and doctors trying to be funny in scrubs. but then came the video that i still haven’t been able to shake off. it was of a young woman, maybe 25 or so, standing at the front of what looked like a church, rocking what the caption said was her baby, who had died the day before. the recurring text that flashed over the image was, “in five minutes, i am going to have to put my baby in that coffin.”

after exhaling, my mind was filled with so many questions. first, who the heck is filming this, and why? second, what is it that drives people to share such intimate, devastatingly painful moments of their lives with complete strangers? encouragement, i suppose. this one video, which had been viewed more than 35 thousand times, had hundreds of compassionate comments, encouraging platitudes and well wishes that continuously floated up the screen. and sure, you could argue that these videos create an important community from which someone can draw comfort, strength and the sense that they aren’t alone in their grief and despair. but posting about your loss is one thing. filming a heart-wrenching last dance with the body of your baby for the world to see is quite another.

turns out that videos about loss and death and illness have turned into a bit of a subgenre on tiktok — #grieftok to be exact — and at the time of writing, it had 794.3 million views. that’s a heck of a lot of people sinking into virtual grief and mourning. and while it might sound a bit morbid and depressing to spend any time at all scrolling through other people’s tears — and sometimes adding your own — psychologist zoe clews told mashable that the sheer magnitude of shareability offered by platforms like tiktok has created “herd safety.” in other words, these communities allow “tolerance, empathy and support to flourish.” she also points to the resulting open support and discussion as a contributing factor in removing the stigma around mental health.

there’s also an element of “bearing witness,” a term used by psychologists who suggest that listening to — and watching — others share their trauma can be pivotal to recovery and healing.

but surely, it can’t be all good, right?

adele walton wrote in a piece for refinery29 that after the loss of her sister, “grieving online offered the illusion of closeness and community without ever really delivering on that promise.” she adds that, “grieving in the digital age has taught me that we cannot rely on digital exchanges to fulfill our complex social needs and emotional desires.”

grief in a digital age

but it’s so much more than just the isolation of submerging ourselves in a weird virtual world of strangers who are friends-but-still-strangers simply by virtue of sending a heart emoji or a hopeful comment. we’ve known for awhile now that social media isn’t great for us, contributing to rising rates of mental health issues, like depression. what’s worse, we have yet to understand the true impact — not only on adults, but also our kids.

“it’s embarrassing that we know so little about tiktok and its effects,” philipp lorenz-spreen, a research scientist at the max planck institute for human development in berlin, told the guardian. in the same piece, marc faddoul, co-director of tracking exposed, a digital rights organization investigating tiktok’s algorithm, said that the app’s “emotional nudges” are hard to recognize.

“it’s not going to make anyone depressed overnight, but hours of consumption every day can have a serious impact on your mental health,” he said.

of course, picking apart our emotional wellbeing is not the only thing tiktok has been slogged for as of late. earlier this year, concerns about how the chinese-owned app is using our information and how vigilant it is about privacy came to light when the office of the privacy commissioner of canada announced that it would begin an investigation about how personal data is being harvested. this at the same time as two european union policy-making institutions banned tiktok from staff phones over cybersecurity worries, as did some u.s. states. tiktok is banned in india.

privacy concerns aside, i can say quite honestly that tiktok has added nothing great to my daily life. i am not minding the peaceful clips of pigs and puppies that ask nothing of me, but at the moment, these are few and far between on my feed, tucked quietly between lots of other things that make me sad, anxious and worried. i am, however, getting better at crafting my feed to my interests, although i don’t hang out there much — and i’m much more attentive of how much time my kids spend absorbing other people’s yuck.

still, when a stranger’s video about someone taking their life on camera or a bizarre “challenge” that is landing teenagers in hospital becomes the first thing a friend you haven’t seen in awhile mentions over dinner, you gotta wonder if we’re allowing these apps to take up a little too much of our personal space. and while witnessing grief and trauma may help some people process their emotions, and benefit those experiencing negative things, it’s not for me — bring on the pigs and puppies.

lisa machado is the executive producer of healthing.ca.

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lisa machado

lisa machado began her journalism career as a financial reporter with investor's digest and then rogers media. after a few years editing and writing for a financial magazine, she tried her hand at custom publishing and then left to launch a canadian women's magazine with a colleague. after being diagnosed with a rare blood cancer, lisa founded the canadian cml network and shifted her focus to healthcare advocacy and education.

machado: #grieftok has become a subgenre on tiktok for processing loss. but is it good for us?

some experts say that putting our trauma online for all to see can help us to work through our emotions and get support, but it can also hurt our mental health.

machado: when it comes to what to say to someone who is grieving, there are no words

prolonged grief is now recognized as a mental health condition

at the time of writing, #grieftok had 794.3 million views.

grief in a digital age

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machado: #grieftok has become a subgenre on tiktok for processing loss. but is it good for us?

some experts say that putting our trauma online for all to see can help us to work through our emotions and get support, but it can also hurt our mental health.

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at the time of writing, #grieftok had 794.3 million views.

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grief in a digital age

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