How quitting social media saved my motherhood

And why you should definitely at least do a social media detox

From “The Facebook” original class to social media ex-pat

I took my first social media break in 2016. It was a big year in America if you recall. It was the first year I remember politics taking over Facebook and seeing my friends and family say things in comment sections that they would never say in real life. I began to ease back, not post as much anymore, not participate in political discussions, and became more of a voyeur. 

This balanced relationship continued until it hit a wall in 2020. We all know how social media played a huge role in disseminating information during the pandemic, and how some would argue that much of the misinformation being handed out turned to be the real information we needed, at least that's what's coming out 4 years later.

This is when I took my first social media break. I don't remember when or for how long, but I do know I was in yoga teacher training as well as starting a new very mentally demanding job, and those were enough to fill up my mental space.

Each year following led to more and more breaks, but the reason shifted. Motherhood changed my perspective on social media entirely. I had my first son in 2021, still in peak pandemic, though much had changed. I'm a millennial who was in the first class of “The Facebook” in 2004 as a college freshman, and I worked in retail when the 2008 e-commerce boom began. But the pandemic shifted the online space even more. 

Everyone took their businesses online and everyone became an influencer. Not to mention, TikTok took off in 2020 when everyone was in their homes with not much else to do. I remained a voyeur on Instagram mostly, scanning motherhood accounts and sharing about all kinds of topics - breastfeeding, home birth, Douglas, baby sleep, and bed sharing…as you can probably see I landed in the crunchy mom algorithm.

Now I'd rather be here than in other places (like Mommy wine culture, but we can go there later), but still, I found the space to be suddenly toxic and full of fearmongering clickbait, all for engagement. These crunchy mom influencers had solutions to problems I didn't even know I had (maybe they are creating the problems to go with their solution, after all, an affiliate commission is on the line!). 

Now not only was I already a first-time mom researching baby sleep, baby-led weaning, vaccines, and everything else under the sun, but now I needed to worry about this air filtration system and this juice for my adrenals. It was all too much.

I started taking regular breaks.

The apps got deleted from my phone for a week, sometimes two. The longest break I've taken was 2 months - this was when my second son was 4 months old and I was suffering from serious postpartum anxiety and a very awful Crohn's flare-up (before I knew the diagnosis). I spent a good portion of those two months in bed at my parents' house, nursing the baby while they entertained my toddler.

I was in such a downward spiral, physically and mentally, I cannot imagine how much worse it would have been had I been on social media during that time. The last thing I needed was late-night doom scroll sessions during a night feeding, trying to distract myself from my ailments by getting sucked into the vitriol of Instagram comments sections.

And so I stayed off and worked on healing. Upon arriving back home after those two months, with some diagnoses, a health plan, and a tiny bit more sanity, I dipped my toe back into the online social space. That was 4 months ago as I write this.

I'm deactivating all of my accounts next week.

Why wait? Another thing that sucked me into social media as a mom, beyond the miasma of content meant to make moms spiral, was the allure of making money online. I'd dabbled in blogs and YouTubing since 2020, but having kids changed everything. I'm now a committed stay-at-home mom, and my time will come with creative endeavors, but boy was I tempted to become the next big deal crunchy mom on Instagram.

I saw what everyone else was doing, seemingly making such good money sharing great products, and helping people switch out the toxins in their life - little did they know they were most likely just shifting the physical toxins into mental toxins.

What good is organic homemade tallow on my skin if I am constantly stressed to the max because I'm on Instagram looking at the tallow?? 

I saw that these two worlds were trying to coexist but they simply could not. It was such a paradigm shift, a wake-up call for me, seeing people talk about postpartum mental health, birth trauma, and moms suffering everywhere on social media - and not a single person ever mentions that social media itself probably plays a big role in all of those.

And so I decided to be that one. I would figure out how to talk about social media sneakily, creating reels reminding moms to “stop scrolling and go see what your toddler is drawing on”. I would spend time online only in creation mode and invite others to come with me when I left social media for weeks or months at a time.

What happened was the dopamine machine got me. It got me!! Again!! And so, before I could even run my first challenge, I deleted the apps again. And decided that the next time I log in it would be to deactivate my accounts for good.

When I tell people about my social media breaks or how I plan to leave them completely (and still share my writing online, just in different mediums like this one), they think it's so admirable and amazing, and wow I wish I could do that!

Being off social media in 2024 is rebellious indeed, seemingly especially for mothers. We are home alone a lot with little kids, this feels like our connection to the world. Everything is online these days, where else can you find information? Groups? Meet people? All of these things came up when I decided to quit altogether. Some I have answers for, some I don't. But I'm not too worried about it.

There's a book on my “to read” list in good reads called “The Joy of Missing Out”. I do hope she talks about social media! When I'm unplugged, I have so much more mental clarity. I'm able to follow my motherly intuition more and pay less attention to what crunchy mom influencers say I should be buying (I bought more houseplants instead of the air purifier). My days with my boys involve long walks, drives to the local nature preserve, museums, farmers' markets, and hours upon hours playing with the water table and swimming. 

All with no scrolling. No excessive picture-taking. Not looking for opportunities to film B roll for a reel. Sometimes with no phone at all. This is the new edgy, it seems, moms off social media. We talk so much about screen time for kids and what social media is doing to our teenage daughters - but there is so very little talk of how these behaviors start with the mothers, who are often the main characters in our children's lives.

Let's lead by example, but also maybe let's just be a little happier! Do it for you first, but then do it for your kids. I dare you to take a break - can you go social media-free for a day? A weekend? A week? A month?? 

You might find yourself full of joy and healing on your motherhood journey, like I am. You might find yourself enjoying your motherhood right now.