One Saturday night in 2016, Jacquelyn Revere received a call from her mother’s friend. “Something strange is happening to him, please come,” she told him on the phone. She was the first sign of what doctors diagnosed as dementia.
Thus, at the age of 29, his life changed and She became “her mother’s mother.”. That experience, unexpected and transformative, is today the center of a TikTok account with hundreds of thousands of followers and that reflects the phenomenon of carefluencerswho share on social networks what it is like to care for an older adult.
In @MomOfMyMomRevere documents how he managed to adapt to a task for which she did not feel prepared, but for which he had no alternative. In the United States, where she and her mother live, more than 5 million people suffer from dementia or Alzheimer’s and diagnoses are getting earlier and earlier.
On many occasions, these people They are cared for in their own homes by relativesas in the case of Revere, or people with very basic knowledge of care learned at some institute.
Their experiences, told through social networks, have become very popular. This is not medical advice or instructions made by professionalsbut with the real experiences that appear when caring for someone for long months and even years.
“This is what I call in my research carefluencers. Social media is, in many ways, the only way many of these people can access support, education and a sense of belonging“, he explained in an interview with The New York Times Francesa Falzarano, a gerontologist at the University of California.
In the case of Revere, She allows herself to appear tired and even angry with her mother. in front of an audience of 650 thousand people and more than 23 million likes. But she also proudly shows her mother’s progress with certain exercises and the joy when they both remember something that excites them.
Although not as massive as those who try makeup or analyze Taylor Swift songs, the carefluencers son a niche in its own right on social media and sometimes they join trends linked to clothing or choreography.
However, when caregivers film themselves together with older adults aged 70, 80 or 90 trying on looks, dancing or even exercising, They don’t always receive praise: There are those who wonder if they have their consent and if that consent is informed.
In short: are these elderly people aware that they will be seen by millions of people?
For some, someone assigned to care tasksthey cannot be spending time and attention filming, editing and posting videos on their accounts (because even the accounts with the senior’s name are managed by the nurses).
Falzarano, on the other hand, believes that unless some worrying behavior is detected, the existence of carefluencers is positive, since “they are contributing to greater awareness and visibility of chronic diseases and in the importance of caregiving.”
