Steve From “Blue’s Clues” Checks in on “The Kids He Raised” and Millennials Are Having Lots of Emotions

On Thursday, Steve Burns, as in Steve from Blue’s Clues, took to his relatively quiet TikTok page to ask his 1.8 million followers how they were doing. 

Looking directly into the camera, Steve talks to his TikTok viewers as if they were speaking in real life while gently saying, “Hey, I’m checking in. Tell me, what’s going on?”

@hioutthereitsmesteve♬ Untitled #6 (2022 Remaster) – Sigur Rós

Then in true Blue’s Clues fashion, Steve sits in silence for almost a minute, seemingly allowing space for his followers to share their feelings. The question and response time is identical to how Steve used to interact with viewers on Blue’s Clues, where he’d ask a question and pause to give young viewers time to answer his questions. 

Steve remains incredibly responsive throughout the TikTok, and he appears sympathetic as he nods along, with emotion visible in his eyes.

Steve never explicitly said anything to fans regarding the documentary or why he was checking in. But with only a handful of videos on his profile, his impressive following didn’t think the video was a coincidence. 

“I feel like he knew that the Nickelodeon fans needed this after the documentary came out,” one comment reads. “And this is the best response: How are you? Are you okay?”

“They need you. The kids who are grown now who watched Nickelodeon,” somebody else wrote. “Thanks for being here.”

“Steve really realizes that sometimes only he can check in on the kids he raised,” wrote another. “It’s something.”

One other comment said, “After the Nickelodeon thing we need our Steve now more than ever.”

Steve from “Blue’s Clues”

Steve was the face of Blue’s Clues from 1996 to 2002. His constant presence in many millennials’ lives at that time was formative. 

In 2022, Steve revealed in an interview with variety that the reason he left the show was because he had been “struggling with severe clinical depression the whole time” he was on the series.

“It was my job to be utterly and completely full of joy and wonder at all times, and that became impossible,” he said. “I was always able to dig and find something that felt authentic to me that was good enough to be on the show, but after years and years of going to the well without replenishing it, there was a cost.”

After years of healing work, Steve says it wasn’t until losing his father in 2015 when his life really became “more manageable.” 

Steve’s check-in, which has 6.8 million views and over 43,000 comments at the time of publication, comes just two months after Elmo sent millennials into a frenzy with a casual tweet asking how everybody was doing. 

The answer is: not well. But we’ve got our childhood safe havens behind us, creating safe spaces on the internet, one tweet at a time.