Quick hits: Elmo helps adults; schools sue social media; rural hearing loss; chatbot and climate deniers talk

Elmo told NBC Today reporters, "I'm really glad I asked."
(NBC News photo)

Feeling weary? You're not alone. "Thousands of people unloaded their life problems on Elmo last week after the red Muppet posed a casual question on X: 'How is everybody doing?' Not well, it seems," reports Angela Yang of NBC News. "The question opened the floodgates to a deluge of internet users eager to vent to the children's show character that had somehow signed himself up to be the internet's newest therapist." Sesame Street used Elmo's touching text to provide emotional health education for adults.

Last week, social media leaders took a grilling by a U.S. Senate committee for their role in helping sexual predators solicit and abuse children. But Congress isn't the only entity looking for social media accountability. "More than 200 school districts have now sued the major social media companies over the youth mental health crisis," reports Arianna Prothero for Education Weekly. "What started as a single lawsuit filed by the Seattle public schools one year ago has morphed into an all-out offensive against the social media platforms. . . . It is still the early stages of this legal saga, but experts say it could prove to be highly consequential for K-12 education — win, lose, or settle."

The world is learning to love cheese. (Canva photo)

Whether it's salty bites of chewy Mimolette or the stretchy delight of melted Gouda, cheese is among the few things many global citizens can agree on. "People can't get enough cheese, regardless of what continent they live on," reports Fran Howard of Dairy Herd. "Cheese has long been a staple in many countries' cuisine, and in those cultures where cheese has more recently been introduced, demand continues to rise." Sarina Sharp, an analyst with the Daily Dairy Report, told Howard: "Global cheese demand just keeps climbing."

Hearing loss is often more common in rural men.
(Photo by Jed Owens, Unsplash)

Along with stiff muscles and diminishing eyesight, aging often includes hearing loss, but rural men are more likely to experience it than others. "A new estimate shows hearing loss affects approximately 37.9 million Americans and is more common in rural areas than urban ones and in men than women," reports Devi Shastri of The Associated Press. "While the study could not explain the reason for the geographic divide, experts who treat hearing loss say there are two factors to consider: how loud noises are and how often people hear them."

Teacher by day and farmer by night, Marcia Ruff helped build her family's Circleville, Ohio, farm from the ground up. She teaches kindergarten during the week but spends most evenings and weekends working on the farm with her husband, Mark, and three children, reports Cheyenne Kramer of Farm Journal. Ruff told Kramer, "This is really the dream life I had envisioned. As a teacher, you educate children and prepare them for the world, but as a farmer, you feed the world." Kramer reports, "Ruff was the 2023 'Women in Ag' award winner. Read more about the Ruffs here.

Freepik photo

Some interesting things happen when humans discuss social issues with an AI chatbot. "In a study recently published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers at the University of Wisconsin asked people to strike up a climate conversation with a GPT-3," reports Kate Yoder of Grist. "The study analyzed the bot’s interactions with more than 3,000 people, mostly in the United States, from across the political spectrum. Roughly a quarter of them came into the study with doubts about established climate science, and they tended to come away from their chatbot conversations a little more supportive of the scientific consensus."