My social media habit is making me an anxious mum, and it’s time to stop
At first, mumfluencer content made writer Kelly Ang feel like she could aspire to be a better mother, but she has found herself becoming anxious and guilty about her own parenting duties.
Ms Kelly Ang (pictured) finds herself instinctively reaching for her phone in every little pocket of downtime throughout the day, but she is now determined to kick the habit. (Photo: CNA/Ooi Boon Keong)
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It’s 11.30pm. My husband and five children are peacefully in bed. Work finally done for the night, I crawl into bed, limbs and eyelids heavy.
But instead of closing my eyes, I grab my phone. “Just one minute,” I tell myself.
I end up doom-scrolling on social media for the next hour. By the time I feel the phone slipping out of my hands, consciousness giving way under the sweet pressure of sleep, it’s 1am.
The next morning, I drag myself out of bed with a groan, kicking myself for wasting the last precious hour awake on social media – or what could’ve been an extra hour of much-needed sleep. Besides the exhaustion, I feel tense and worried.
It’s time for me to face it: My social media habit is making me an anxious mum.
IT’S NEVER “JUST ONE MINUTE”
By now, I don’t even think before going on social media anymore.
In little pockets of downtime throughout the day, it’s practically instinctive – when I’m putting my toddler down for her daytime nap, when I’m in between pieces of work, when putting my kids to bed, and late at night in bed.
Muscle memory guides my hands to reach for my phone and my fingers to tap on the Instagram, Facebook and Reddit icons.
I tell myself I’m just “popping in” to look for meal ideas for the next week. Or organisation hacks to sort our growing piles of stuff. Or for easy home activities to keep my preschool children off screens.
I also follow a lot of mum influencers who share their perfectly curated lives, their photos and videos full of their carefully coordinated outfits and the delicious meals they whip up daily for the family, their homes saturated in soft golden sunlight.
They share meaningful, thought-provoking quotes about motherhood, exhorting me to “treasure every moment while they’re little”, or to quit yelling at my kids because “the way we talk to our children will become their inner voice”.
Sometimes I feel compelled and inspired to be a better mum: Never mind all the work deadlines and other responsibilities! Soak in every moment with my children!
Sometimes I swing to the other end: I should hustle harder! Live up to my true potential as a #mumboss!
But most of the time, even though I know everything’s carefully set up for the ’Gram, I just end up feeling inadequate.
ASPIRATIONAL OR ANXIETY-INDUCING?
Consuming all this mum content initially made me feel like I may aspire to certain goals. A motherhood model, if you will.
The content from mumfluencers always seems so wholesome, encouraging and educational. It would only benefit me to take a leaf out of their books, right?
But then I found myself looking at my own mum life and, more and more often, wishing it were something else.
For instance, as a busy mum, I was always trying to find simple, tasty meals I could make for the family, so I watched cooking videos for hours on end.
Overloading myself with ideas and options often left me feeling overwhelmed and unable to make a swift decision on what we should eat that day.
Mum content is often also inundated by mumfluencers advocating for certain modern-day parenting philosophies that I find challenging to live out even though I agree with them in principle.
Most of them are genuinely great reminders for me to see my children as individuals in their own right, and to do my best to give them the safety and love they deserve in their childhood.
But when we have to be somewhere by 3.30pm, and there are still bags to be packed and outfits to change into and no one’s moving in spite of repeated calm reminders to be ready by 3pm, I’ve found it impossible not to raise my voice.
And immediately. I'd feel guilty for failing to be a paragon of “gentle” and “respectful” parenting.
“Did I cause them irreparable harm when I raised my voice like that?”
“Am I ruining their attention span by pawning them off on the TV because I needed 15 minutes of quiet to attend to an urgent work matter?”
These questions really do keep me up at night.
And I get stuck in an anxiety spiral, a debilitating loop of panic, worry and self-loathing.
I find myself obsessing repeatedly about how I can “do better” – and the very next day, I’m back for more mumfluencer content, hoping that maybe this time, I’ll somehow find the secret to being a better mum on my feed.
Instead of feeling empowered, educated or enlightened, my late-night social media scrolling often leaves me anxious and worried instead. Like I can’t measure up to the mums whose lives I follow on social media.
Compounding that anxiety is the awareness that I’m responsible for modelling “healthy” behaviours for my children.
In this day and age, it’s downright impossible to completely cut our children off from technology and, by extension, social media. But if my children getting sucked into this anxiety-inducing rabbit hole is inevitable, I’d also like to ensure that they’re well equipped with the tools they need to navigate it.
I want them to be able to separate their self-worth from the "likes" and comments they get. I want them to be purposeful about consuming content online, instead of mindlessly scrolling until something catches their attention.
Most importantly, I want them to have self-control – to be able to unplug and spend time living their lives in the real world, instead of just on their devices.
FORMING HEALTHY SOCIAL MEDIA HABITS
I do think it would be best for my mental health if I completely disconnected from social media.
Unfortunately, there’s no escaping it for now. I need it to stay tuned in to trends for work and keep tabs on what’s going on in Gen Alpha land.
What my family and I really need are healthy social media habits – clear lines and firm boundaries. My husband and I agree that this begins with us.
For a start, we have decided to leave our phones on the coffee counter from 6pm to 8.30pm every day. Every evening, for two-and-a-half hours, we will commit ourselves wholly and fully to focusing on our children and each other as we wind down from the hustle and bustle of the day.
On my part, I’ve vowed to eschew mindless scrolling in my precious few pockets of downtime each day. Instead, I’m going to be more intentional about choosing the content I consume, like e-books or podcasts.
This may seem like a small step, but it’s crucial for regaining control over my digital habits. By keeping my social media usage deliberate and focused, I hope to be able to keep my own negative feelings and anxieties about it in check.
Most importantly, I hope that by watching their parents model healthy relationships with our devices and digital activities, our children will be able to build the same for themselves.
Kelly Ang is a mother of five and a freelance writer.
