Elmo sparks a national therapy session: A brief oral history

On Monday morning, January 29, 2024, Christina Vittas posted a nine-word tweet: “Elmo is just checking in! How is everybody doing?” Apparently, not so great.

Vittas had been managing the social accounts for the beloved Sesame Street superstar since the end of 2020. She hadn’t anticipated that Elmo’s friendly question would tap into a deep vein of national angst: a looming presidential election, inflation, and conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine.

Christina Vittas: I thought, Strategically, when is the best time for Elmo to post this? Monday morning, right? People are getting back in. “How are we doing?” is a question that a friend would ask. I posted on X at 10:46 a.m.

Aaron Bisman, SVP of Marketing for Sesame Workshop: Vibes weren’t so hot, and Christina had a sense that this was a great moment to ask this question. We saw that the engagement was very, very fast. Within a couple of hours, we realized we had sparked an important conversation.

Vittas: At about 1 p.m., one of my coworkers, [senior social media manager] Eder Reynoso, tapped me on the shoulder in our meeting and was like, Christina, this is going places.

Rosemarie Truglio, SVP of Curriculum and Content for Sesame Workshop: I didn’t know the tweet was going out, but my office is very close to marketing and communications, so then of course I went online and was surprised by the sheer volume and kinds of responses.

Elmo: Elmo didn’t realize so many people were having big feelings!

By early afternoon, Elmo’s tweet had become the number one trending topic on X, prompting discussions on Reddit, Instagram, and Facebook. Other Sesame Street characters joined in, sharing links to the Sesame Workshop curriculum. Celebrities like Chance the Rapper and T-Pain also weighed in, culminating in a message from President Biden via the POTUS account: “Our friend Elmo is right: We have to be there for each other, offer our help to a neighbor in need, and above all else, ask for help when we need it. Even though it’s hard, you’re never alone.”

Bisman: We regrouped to discuss what to do with all this attention. That’s when we saw the opportunity to make this a moment to share our emotional well-being resources, an initiative we launched in May 2023.

Truglio: The curriculum comes from a developmental and educational perspective. To create it, we’re listening to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association. We’re demystifying mental health. We’re providing families with the language and the strategies and the toolbox to manage their feelings.

Bisman: Elmo’s tweet rearticulated a core concept, and now we had a new educational framework for how we teach these things. That helped extend what we could do with it.

The conversation continues to this day, reaching its apex, perhaps, on October 18, 2024, when Elmo and Andrew Garfield engaged in a heartfelt video discussion about how the actor continued to process his grief after the passing of his mother in 2019.

Bisman: Again, I give Christina full credit. She’s immersed in pop culture and knew that Andrew was talking pretty openly about the loss of his mother.

Vittas: That conversation brought additional life to the campaign. That’s the power of the internet, finding something when it’s truly a great, authentic fit.

Elmo: Elmo learned that it’s very important to check on your friends and see how they’re doing, because maybe they’re not feeling okay—and sometimes just being a friend can help.

Bisman: We were thinking about whether we’d want to do something to mark the one-year anniversary. But after the Andrew Garfield moment, we were thinking, When will it be too much? The worst thing you can do in social is beat a joke or a viral moment to death. We definitely didn’t want to do that. To be like, Oh, remember that thing we did a year ago? It didn’t feel like the right moment.

Vittas: When you bring up Elmo online, people typically know of this moment. I think it’s an honor that Elmo is connected with checking in on friends.

Elmo: Elmo wants everyone to know that they always have a friend on Sesame Street. Elmo loves you!