battling cancer, they got to put together outfits, and they had stylists put on makeup. i'm stephanie sy, "the stream" is coming up next. >> hi, i'm lisa fletcher, and you're in the stream. social media talk about life, but what about death? how we discuss changing one tweet at a time. bringing in the community program is our digital producer,

raj, and even when we put the topic out there. >> it resonated in a big way. we are flooded with tweets and personal stories. and i'm going to share a few of them. we're tweeting about marriages and birth and photos of our kids, and it seems that death is the inevitable cycle of life. roger says, we tumble our way through emotions, and the internet creates ways to help others going through the same motions.

>> what about you? do you think that you would put it on line. >> i thought about it, and i would. since you and i share so much with the online community, i think that death and getting to that stage, i would want to share it, to not feel alone, and to talk to my community about that important stage in life. >> i wonder if, he started organically started tweeting about the impending death of his mother and how millions of people latched onto that. >> he created global empathy and awareness. >> how about you? would you turn to social media to open up about your last days? 70% of adults use social media, a way to update others on what's happening, and one thing that we

don't discuss is death and dying. according to the cdc, nearly 2.5 million americans die each other. the majority to chronic and internal illnesses, and it's something that people don't want to talk about. but surveys show that they are waiting for someone else to bring it up. >> what i think, if 30% later have mess tas ises, were are not 30% of the stories in the media about men and women with those diseases is. it should be a ratio. a lot of the stories are ra ra, and they don't want to hear from people like me, who have the situation of taking chemotherapy for the rest of our lives and depending on that treatment. >> lisa adams appeared on our program during breast cancer awareness month. and for six years, she has been

using the social media to talk. and now with incurable cancer, she's using this. people are using it for death and dying, and through pictures and hashtags and blogs, they are dealing with death at their own pace. critics question the appropriateness of questioning in a public forum and oversimplifying the issue. so does social media have a place in the conversation about death and dying? helping to shape this conversation, david kessler, grief expert. author of the book, you can heal your heart, and on skype, justin very wel bell donee. for people who refuse to give up on life. david and debbie oliver. and david maintains a blog for cancer, and jody, a breast

cancer advocate with stage 4 breast cancer, who helped to create in the media. we see passing of others on social media, but why do you think that we're seeing more discussion in the process of terminal illness and death now more than ever on the social media. >> thank you for talking about it and showing it to them. i don't think that we know lou to talk about it anymore. where the dead go around in white, unmarked vans, and we're looking for that town square. social media is the new town square. >> what is it about american culture that you said our grandparents had it different than we do. what makes it so different about our culture to talk about these things. >> we have become so youth oriented and we believe that death is optional, and there's

something so primely, that we want our lives witnessed and our death witnessed and our grief witnessed. >> speaking of that, you decided to do a series called my last days. why did you do that? >> i was looking around, and i realized that we tend to procrast night, especially in my generation, and we didn't want to procrastinate in the life that we want to live. i made death the message of joy, and where dost thou grieve? and the way to make death not so taboo and bring some light to it, so to speak, and maybe make it inspiring. that's how the show is created. >> justin, you mentioned not making death a taboo, but the

absence of heavy grieving. thanks to the images of the television drama, this is actor john snyder from the dukes of hazard, this is an hour after john had discovered that his father had died. and thank you, john, for sharing these image was us. and we have this blog by our guests, deborah and david. and you have shared this journey with all of america, and what do we learn about the empathy? >> i think it's amazing. our blog has had over 81,000

hits from 74 different countries, and none of us get out of this alive. people respond and say, you know, you're teaching us things our physicians and nurses never told us about what happens during chemotherapy and radiation, and especially about the side effects. we just love your youtube blogs. >> jody, you started bcsm. and you have a huge online community of breast cancer survivors and breast cancer patients. how do you think social media is changing the way we discuss these issues? >> it's an absolutely remarkable thing, and the way that we can now connect with someone that's affected with the same disease, whether it be primary or metastatic or incurable cancer as i have, and you may have looked before for someone to have what you have.

and now all you have to do is get on twitter and type in the bcsm hashtag, and you can be talking with 20, 30, 40 women just right off the bat. so it has done a phenomenal job of connecting people, and that's what people with illness need. they need the affirmation and the connections that help them understand and relate to other people. >> david kessler, are there drawbacks to having these kinds of conversations online. >> we perceived that there would be, but there really isn't. people are much kinder than we expect them to be online. we can be cruel online, but not around this topic, and we're hungry for fox. grief.com, and all of these things, it's about the connection. we yearn for it. >> our community is giving us a lot of feedback. social media is a lifeline:

something that i'm really curious about, families of those who have passed away or suffering from terminal illness, when it comes to these days, what are the values that people treasure? what is important in life to those near the brink of death. >> it's really interesting. they have all said the same thing. it's about family, it's about love, it's about experiences. and it's really just about connection. all the material wants and needs are just gone. and it really just becomes about the moment that you're in now, and its like you're almost made clean. as you pass from everything in this world. so it's all the same. which is really really interesting. >> i couldn't agree more.

justin, living in the moment, right now, this is everything. i don't worry about yesterday. and i don't even think about tomorrow, because if i live really well today, then every yesterday is a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow is a vision of hope. so i look forward to this day every day. >> i love you. >> there's something about that. when we look at a topic, we look at death and dying, we're going to be sad and depressed, and it's the opposite. we take in our lives, and we feel more alive than ever when we don't cut off this part of our life. >> there's something about it obviously, i don't know what it is. i do know what it is, we're talking about death and dying, it's sad. and this is a question that miss manors probably never got asked. how do you talk about death and dying online?

the thing is that we all have one thing in common, and that's that we're going to die. so why are we waiting to be happy like they are? why are we waiting to do the things that we want to do. we should be doing them now, and calling our moms and brothers and sisters, and mending relationships, and meeting people on the streets, and leaving our legacy behind every single day. that's why it's so popular and joyful. we're not focus on the dying part but focusing on the living part, which is the point of dying. it reminds us that we have to live. >> david, go ahead. >> there are three major responses to the terminal

diagnosis. we have the people who get depressed and there are those who fight it with futility, and others, it is what it is. and that's what we're doing, but we need to get those people who are depressed to get onto social media as well. >> libby just mentioned: we have a great video coming from lizzy. >> an event where people get together and talk about death and have tea and delicious cake. popularity of the death cafe movement dispels that people don't want to talk about death. i brought it to the media in 2012 and since then, death cafes have popped up. they have no agenda, no

ideology, just open coverings about death and dying. >> well, david, i want to go over this. often the critique of social media is super contexts, and there's nothing like face-to-face conversations when it comes to the community. and what's your response to that critique? >> i think that's changing. i think we're finding we can connect very well. and when you think about it, when a person is dying, and they reach out and try to connect, you think, don't talk way, focus on getting better, we leave them alone and isolate them. if i can reach out and find a better soul, the better. the fear is that if i look at the fact, someday i'm going to die, and you're going to die, we think it's going to pres depres, the reality is that it lets me connect with you, and serve better, and take this life in.

>> jody, do you find there are barriers that come down when you're having conversations online? do people feel more at ease asking questions if you don't know how to phrase face-to-face? >> people are forthcoming and just encouraged to talk about things that they thought about with having their illness. one thing that i -- social media isn't going anywhere. we're only just in the beginning stage of this kind of technology in our lives, and i think the more humanely we weave it into what we experience, in a natural way, in a way that doesn't feel forced, in a way that is an extension of our personality, then worries about taboos about death and etiquette and questions like that will cease to be relevant. >> you know, i think unless

you've experienced a virtual hug in the midst of a crisis, you probably don't understand it. but i've been fortunate enough to experience that. the very day we received the bad news, and as i shared that with my friends, and all of the weeks and weeks, virtual hugs every day. and that's wonderful. >> it is wonderful. and there's nothing superficial about the connections that people make in a diseased community or an illness community. and you'll find that when we meet each other in person, the getting to know you process is actually accelerated. i have very rarely connected with someone online and then met them in person and been disappointed. every single time, it's wow it's you, ask i'm so glad to meet you. >> but you already know each

other. so what happens when the blogging and the tweeting stops, and you learn that the person with whom you've been walking through this journey has died. how does it change the grieving process in the online legacy, next.

>> it represents the starting point of another. what a wonderful purpose. >> his message, his legacy, he captivated so many people around the world. >> welcome back. we're talking about social media

and its place in the discuss of death and dying. david kessler, i was talking to my producer earlier today. she booked all of our guests for this show, and she said it was such an emotional experience. because she would find tweets online, and go to them and find they passed away days or weeks ago. and it was haunting and fascinating at the same time, because their words were so eternal and their pictures there in front of her. and i thought this must be a universal experience that people have. what is the effect of this lasting and online legacy for these families and loved ones? >> many think that it would be negative, but i'm amazed at the people i've talked to that they shared, they love that there's a legacy of their loved one, and someone says i ran across them online and i read about them. they love going back through their last days. it helps them feel like their loved one lived and was

remembered and honored. >> and our community has been tweeting in, and we have the full spectrum. allison said: deborah, i want to go to you with this. may david have a long life, my friend. and right now, you're battling terminal cancer, and debbie, same question to you. how will you be using social media, right now and in the future to really connect with this community that you've developed and really honor the man who is to your left? >> you know, i think its important that we continue to document this journey. i've been in hospice care for year. i was a director, and now i do research in that area, and the

lack of knowledge that people have about how beautiful this experience can be. people think we're crazy, but that has been one of the best years of our life. we traveled all over, and we're free of many kinds of responsibilities that you can get bogged down in, so my goal is to continue to document this, and i know it's going to get harder, especially as david gets more frail and less able to contribute more of the burden and it falls upon me. and how he do that during the bereavement is going to be more challenging. being alone and feeling it myself. but our family is committed to this, and our kids have joined in this process as well. and it's brought mission and meaning, and indeed, it will be honoring david with what we do, and it's a legacy that we leave for our grandchildren. >> and a beautiful legacy and note and that's all the time we have for this discuss. thanks it to to all of you for

sharing your stories. until next time, see on you line.