Social Media's Impact on mothers and their impact on Social Media

Hello again! 

This post is going to dive into what factors might influence whether social media has negative influences, like links with depression, versus positive results, such as boosts in self-esteem. I will also detail whether social networking sites have a responsibility to promote mental health in their users and how they might go about doing so. I have chosen to discuss these topics through focusing on mother’s mental health and how it is affected by social media.

Adler and Proctor's 2023 textbook has a special section called “Focus on Research” that details depictions of motherhood on social media and the effects those have on mothers (p. 103). The section takes excerpts from two studies: “'Fake Smile. Everything is under control.': The flawless performance of motherhood.” and “Comparisons to picture-perfect motherhood: How Instagram’s idealized portrayals of motherhood affect new mothers’ well-being.” Some of the factors that result in social media having negative effects on mothers is the images shared on social media projecting a perfect image of motherhood. Everyone is all smiles and organic baby food, to limit pesticides and heavy metals, and glass jars, to limit microplastics, and so on. If moms aren’t doing everything exactly “right” then they feel like a failure and that is something that isn’t often shared on social media. A contrast to this is content creators like KC Davis on TikTok who share’s her messy kitchen at the end of the day and how she makes a functional living space with her closing duties. I can’t explain it as nearly as elegantly as she does but it comes down to do what you need to do to make your space functional and truly live in your space. She has made a community for moms to feel like they can be open about the realities of motherhood along with a slew of other content creators on TikTok who have hopped on the train of showing “real” motherhood. The messy realities of raising children. The image below shows what this might look like (Adler & Proctor, 2023, p. 103). Sometimes this means showing the behind the scenes that make the perfect imagery on social media possible like the house cleaner, home organizer, house manager, and nanny. Other times it means showing what a home and family looks like that doesn’t have access to all of those resources.

I’d also like to discuss social media’s responsibility to promote mental health and how they should do so. Well, I think the first responsibility social media has is to not harm people’s mental health. This can be done through content moderation. However, it’s very important that content moderation is done in the right way because sometimes it can cause more harm than good. The best example of content moderation I’ve seen is in my local moms group on Facebook, that helps me find local activities for my nanny kids. These moderators make sure that moms keep things civil, don’t shame each other, and offer resources not opinions when they aren’t asked for. Platforms like TikTok and X have a lot to learn from Meta when it comes to content moderation.

Sources:

Adler, R. B., & Proctor, R. F. (2024). Interplay : the process of interpersonal communication (Sixteenth edition). Oxford University Press.

DeGroot, J. M., & Vik, T. A. (2019). “Fake Smile. Everything is under Control.”: The Flawless Performance of Motherhood. Western Journal of Communication, 85(1), 42–60. https://doi.org/10.1080/10570314.2019.1678763

Kirkpatrick, C. E., & Lee, S. (2022). Comparisons to picture-perfect motherhood: How Instagram’s idealized portrayals of motherhood affect new mothers’ well-being. Computers in Human Behavior, 137, 107417. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2022.107417