Is Social Media Changing Our Motherhood Experience?

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Whether you want to believe it or not, social media is changing our motherhood experience. But is that necessarily bad?

Social media is a powerful thing.

I think we can all agree on that.

It can be used for good. It can be used for bad. But, my question lately is how much is it changing our motherhood experience.

I’ve written quite a bit in the past about social media. After all, it’s a huge part of my job. I feel like I have a love/hate relationship with social media, and the hate part stems from how easy it is to feel less than or not good enough when scrolling through our feeds. For instance, you see this beautiful picture below of our kids on Christmas morning?

You see smiling faces, presents under the tree, perfectly matching pajamas (we even got ones for Oliver that he hated), and our seemingly clean home in the background. Well my friends, this picture took place days before Christmas morning even took over our home. Why? Because I knew that I needed to get that “perfect” photo for social media. I also knew that on actual Christmas morning things are chaotic. The kids are so excited and posing for perfect photos is out of the question.

So there’s my truth: I staged a Christmas morning photo for social media so that not only did it look nice, but I didn’t want to hear my kids complain about stopping to take a pictures on Christmas morning. This is a direct result of that pressure that social media has placed on moms and I know that I’m not just feeling it because I am a full time blogger – you are all feeling it, too.

This is being a mom in the year 2020.

Social media has greatly changed that landscape for us.

I feel like I’ve heard so many people say how they wish that our children’s lives were different. How the kids are different. Their childhood’s aren’t anything like ours. But our kids are growing up in a completely different period of time where social media and technology are huge parts of our lives and we have to prepare them for that without wishing it away. Things just are different.

And it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Is Social Media Changing Our Motherhood Experience?

It is.

Social media has a huge presence in our lives and there are parts of the motherhood experience that is being changed by it. For instance, where new moms used to attend play groups, they are now finding their community online and making forever friendships and have a place to vent about both the joys and challenges of motherhood at all hours of the day. I’d call that a win.

We are able to document and share memories via social media. This is especially huge if you live far away from family members. It’s opened the doors for completely new ways to communicate with people, and I think that’s pretty incredible.

For me, I do feel a constant shuffle in my life as I navigate between balancing social media for business use and personal use, but I do believe that is just a part of parenting in 2020.

Just like any change in our culture, there will always be the good and the bad. Nothing is perfect and while I do think that social media has brought a lot of good along with it, I can’t help but think how we might also be a generation of mothers kinda addicted to our phones. Are we yearning for that instant gratification that comes from likes on photos and gaining followers? Is this a result of us feeling isolated? It’s a lot to consider.

While I can’t speak on behalf of everyone, I can honestly say for myself that social media can be exhausting. I do put so much pressure on myself and then feel discouraged whenever I scroll and see people seemingly having a better motherhood experience than me, or an Instagram perfect home, or the perfect matching color scheme throughout their whole feed. It’s exhausting and I think that stepping away from time to time is what we need. It’s the only cure for social media overwhelm.

And whenever you are feeling like social media is altering your motherhood experience in a bad way, stop and think about the good that it’s brought, too. Think about that local activity your toddler loved that you found out about through the events tab, the friend you recently re-connected with from high school, the mom tribe that was there to answer all of your breastfeeding questions in the middle of the night, and how you might get to watch your nieces and nephews who you only get to see a few times a year grow through pictures.

Social media isn’t going anywhere so we gotta evolve with it.