Social media has been a big part of my life since I first logged on about 20 years ago. Hours spent chatting on MSN to school mates I’d spent all day with, painstakingly learning coding to curate the perfect MySpace page to attract the perfect emo boy, procrastination ‘poking’ Facebook friends instead of revising for my A-Levels.
Over the years, my relationship with social media has ebbed and flowed, a love and a hate, an addiction and an aversion. I’ve worked with it for over a decade in many different capacities as a digital marketer. There have been times I’ve not been able to put my phone down, especially on my darker depression days craving the validation and dopamine hit from notifications to distraction from my demons. There have also been times I’ve hated its existence and deleted all of the apps from my phone not caring if I’m forgotten.
Motherhood feels a lot like those darker times; lonely, craving external validation, scrolling away the hours, filling the void of time of real human interaction while on maternity leave. Social media’s never-ending stream of information, miserable news, carefully curated posts and heavily filtered lifestyles teetering on the slippery slope to comparison, isolation, and depression. It can feel like every man and his squirrel is out there #LivingTheirBestLife while I’m welded to the sofa, nap-trapped, wiping yet another spit-up out of my hair.
Throughout pregnancy and leading up to my due date, I was online minimally. I promised myself I wouldn’t get sucked into wasting hours of my time trawling my newsfeeds once the baby was here, knowing what a negative impact it can have on my mental health. I promised myself I wouldn’t plug the gap of social engagement with seeking online engagement. I promised myself I’d be present for my child and they wouldn’t grow up fighting for my attention from the other side of a little rectangle.
But to tell the truth, my social media usage has gone through the roof over the 4 months since I gave birth. Through boredom. Through a lack of energy or focus to do anything else. Through a tedium of browsing the streaming channels for something to watch. Through an intention of picking my phone up to look for or do something specific only to get sidetracked for hours, and eventually remember what I originally wanted to do, to probably get distracted again. Rinse, and repeat.
I can clearly see how social media could exacerbate any baby blues or postnatal depression. Especially if you then feel the need to start distorting your own truth to fit in, or earn some extra dopamine notification nuggets. These platforms are quite literally designed to hook us in and not let us go, and can be hugely damaging to anyone, but especially new mums who are flooded with hormones, doubts, and often only have a tiny noncommunicative human for company.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a lot of good from social media. I’ve ignited and rekindled friendships with people all over the country - some new friends, some old - all in the trenches of new motherhood. I’ve learnt from child psychologists, sleep consultants, women’s health physiotherapists and other professionals, whose job it is to support new parents and have generously shared their knowledge on their Instagram accounts. I’ve restarted writing for myself, as a cathartic creative outlet, something I haven’t done in a long time and missed so much. I’ve had happy silly distractions for when things have been tough - you really cannot get better than a daft labrador TikTok.
And that’s the thing with social media (as with a lot of things); it’s all about intention. Most things have the power to be good and/or bad. It’s our intention behind them which makes them so. I remember when social media first came out. Twitter was all about connection, Facebook was community and Instagram was creativity. Now, it feels like an overwhelming hot mess because it’s being used without those positive intentions. It’s more comparison, dodgy algorithms, procrastination and bullying, and it doesn’t feel good.
So, I’m pledging to myself - and any other mums reading this who may also be struggling with the “maternity scroll hole” - to realign our social media use with positive intentions. With connection, community, and creativity. To create more than I consume, and to connect more than I create.
I pledge to set timers on my apps so I cannot spend hours of my day needlessly scrolling. I’ve got a glorious little human in my life, and a rapidly growing TBR pile, why waste my life distracting myself from the good stuff I have right in front of me? #AintNobodyGotTimeForThat
I pledge to share less, and connect more. To reach out to old friends and do better at keeping in touch with current ones. To build a community around me of amazing folk (and businesses), people who I actually want to be a part of my digital realm.
I pledge to unfollow any accounts I’m following for the sake of it; people I’ll never speak to, businesses I’ll never buy from, celebs I’m not even interested in, restaurants I’ll never go to. It’s time to make space for the ones that truly matter and my brain to breath.
I pledge to create separate spaces where I can get the doom and gloom news when I want to - not when the world wants to force it down my throat. Let’s face it, right now it’s a lot and I am SUCH A SUCKER for wanting to stay up-to-date with EV-ERY-THING. There’s a healthier way to get my 5-a-day in current affairs.
I pledge to repeatedly check in with myself on this. Because progress - especially as a long term social media addict - is definitely not linear. If I want to reclaim hours a day to spend with my family, I’m going to have to put the work in and call myself out when I inevitably stumble and fall.
Ultimately, when we’re old, we’re not going to wish we’d spent more time online, we’d shared more reels or got more ‘likes’. But we will wish we’d been more present and spent more time with those we love.