There is no shortage of articles floating around the mom blogosphere about the inaccuracy of comparing your day-to-day life with the carefully curated life you see others present via their social media accounts. The term “highlight reel” describes the tendency many moms have to only share the best moments of their days, which paints an inaccurate picture of how they’re really handling the nitty gritty details of life with small children. It’s lead to the push to be more real on social media, to share honest stories of motherhood and to encourage others by assuring them they aren’t alone in struggles they may be facing.
Listen, I highly value authenticity and honesty in every facet of my life and I attempt to look for ways to help, support, and champion other women whenever possible. But I’m starting to resent the implication that if I’m not sharing soul-baring, tantrum documenting, mom failing posts often enough, I’m somehow being fake.
There are several reasons my social media account reads mostly like a highlight reel of my adventures and activities with my kids, but it isn’t because of my desire to present a false image of myself as a mother. For one thing, those types of photos are what I feel comfortable sharing with everyone I am “friends” with. I may not feel like sharing the specific details of my toddler’s behavior struggles with the random girl I had freshman English with in college, even if I do keep her around for the hilarious memes she shares and pictures of her cute cats.
Moreover, I’m not sure it’s always fair or respectful to my kids to be enumerating the many ways they drove me crazy that day for all the world to see and the internet to keep record of in perpetuity. I have written before about not sharing personal, embarrassing stories of my kids just to get a laugh or sympathy from friends. This means that I often choose to share very little publicly about my difficult days and instead reach out to a friend or family member when I need to vent or ask advice.
Mostly, though, I prefer to record the times I want to look back on and remember later. We all enjoy seeing a “memory” pop up containing one of our favorite pictures of our kids from a certain age or one which documents the best family vacation we ever had. I get that traveling with little kids can be especially tough. But I’ve seen it suggested that the beautiful beach pictures, angelic ice cream covered smiles and ambitious itineraries people share from their vacations are mostly just lies they’ve staged in order to make others feel like they’re failing at giving their kids awesome childhood memories. And frankly, that makes me angry. There are times the outings or vacations we’ve taken with our kids haven’t gone to plan, but I understand that this is part and parcel of taking small children places. I don’t stage photos to put a false spin on those days; I just choose not to post about them at all. I choose to delight in and document the moments when my kids’ faces register pure joy or experience something for the first time and I choose to chalk up the tantrums that happened along the way to the reality of dealing with littles and to let them go.
I know that there is danger in comparing ourselves to others and to feeling inadequate or alone in our struggles. I don’t mean to suggest that people should keep their difficult thoughts and experiences to themselves if they feel like sharing them on their social media. I think there is a lot of power and bravery in doing so and that it is another benefit to living in this digital age. However, I choose to use my social media as more of a photo album of highlights to look back on and it doesn’t make me fake or a liar.
