Social Media Is Making Me Feel Like a Bad Parent, And I’m Over It

Ah, social media. It’s a beautiful and equally damaging place when you’re a new parent. On one hand, the constant flow of information-sharing can really help you through some of those tricky moments, like teething, starting solids, and sleep routines. On the other, that constant flow of information can leave you feeling, well, pretty terrible at parenting.

I’m sure comparison culture existed long before Instagram and TikTok. That parents were confronted with misinformation, bragging mums and dads, and seemingly-advanced babies before we could even access the internet. But man, it really feels like my generation is getting the lion’s share of damaging discourse.

It started in pregnancy. I loved my Facebook “June 2025 Babies Due” group, because it was a place for me to share all the crappy parts of my first trimester when I was still keeping my pregnancy under wraps. But as the group grew, so did the toxic competitiveness. “My baby kicked for the first time!” someone wrote at 10 weeks. Even though I was skeptical, it set my mind whirring. Was my baby okay if he wasn’t kicking yet?

Then, it was colostrum collection. Mums would share freezer shelves filled with syringes of colostrum, stacks on stacks. I couldn’t get a single drop. 

Around the same time, I’d started to watch Instagram and TikTok videos about breastfeeding, sleep and settling, all the usual anxiety-inducing parts of impending parenthood. Many were really informative and helpful – posts by midwives and recent parents designed to help me prepare with learned wisdom. The problem? My algorithm started spitting all kinds of advice and “real life” videos at me. I found myself fixated on some new concern every day, and this only became more fever-pitched once I had my son.

This content had the appearance of being helpful, but had actually been strategically structured to keep me engaged. This looked like anxiety-bait (“don’t do this if you’re breastfeeding”) or fear-bait (“if your baby isn’t doing this, something might be wrong”). Sometimes it was someone’s “realistic” night with a newborn, except with the editing and soft lighting, it just made my chaotic evenings of latch problems and couch vomits seem like a failure. 

There I was, deep in the newborn trenches, and constantly on my phone during long feeds or nap traps. Constantly being bombarded with seemingly supportive videos that just left me feeling really stressed about my baby’s development or how I was parenting.

I was already an emotional, hormonal wreck. I was already checking that my baby was sleeping soundly every five minutes. I was trying my absolute best, and I didn’t need the added pressure of some influencer showing off their aesthetically pleasing nursery while they yapped at me about how their baby sleeps 12 hours, and mine could too if I paid for this PDF of a sleep routine.

This is the problem with social media. We are slaves to the algorithm, and the popular apps now deliver not just content made by the people you choose to follow, but adjacent content that might not serve you that well. So while I might follow some fantastic experts like The Middee Society and Baby Food Bible, experts who make me feel confident and empowered in my parenting journey, the algorithm also gives me hundreds of other videos, often ones that have gone viral because of arguments in the comments or techniques the creators have used to generate maximum engagement.

I am so sick of the babies that can walk at six months, of the mums preparing gourmet meals during their child’s one decent nap, of the fearmongering “if you use your phone at all around your baby they will hate you forever” stuff.

It’s hard enough navigating parenthood when you’ve never done it before, so I have a real resentment for anyone that capitalises on our nervousness, because yes, we will watch the video that tells us we might be making a mistake with our baby, or the one that shows a baby reaching a milestone early that we aren’t even experiencing a hint of yet. We can’t help ourselves.

The solution? I don’t have a realistic one. I have a love/hate relationship with social media, because it is a wealth of knowledge, but it’s also the pit of hell. I enjoy a brainless scroll, but I usually do it for too long and feel crap. Maybe getting one of those app-blocking things like Brick is the key, and forcibly logging off for chunks of the day? I’ve definitely left a few Facebook groups that were doing me more harm than good.

I do think that the less we engage with these toxic posts, the less we will get shoved in our faces. I’m trying to scroll past when I can sense a video or comment that’s trying to make me feel bad to rack up engagement. I’m alerting my social apps that I don’t want content similar to whatever doesn’t serve me, so I get less in future.

I am so tired. We all are! Can’t we just be real, honest and empathetic when it comes to parenthood online? Here is the bright side of social media – when you do come across a mum keeping it real, showing you the raw and vulnerable side of parenthood, acknowledging they don’t always have it together and that’s okay. When you find a supportive, knowledgeable expert delivering helpful advice without judgement or toxic engagement tricks.

More of that please, and less making me feel bad for being human.