How to Manage Mother’s Day and Social Media

Some people say social media is the worst thing to happen to Mother’s Day. When we started sharing our private family moments publicly, a change took place while most of us were busy curating filters and comparing fashions. As a result, some women—moms and non-moms—look away until the parade is over. Others wrestle with inner messages and self-imposed pressure while posing the generations of their life for perfect photos that media platforms will remind us of in years to come. Can we manage Mother’s Day and Social Media?

A lot of this happened without us even realizing it. Social media mixes some healthy with some not-so-healthy. It inevitably makes a lot of profiles look like “it moms,” while making others feel like “not-it women”. To raise the concern that social media manufactures messages about motherhood and family into a somewhat muddy mixtures is to risk having our friend list give us a “sad face” emoji or worse—”take a break.”

But what if we tread water just for a moment in the social media waves and think about it? What if we ask questions about social media like:

• Is it helping me be a better woman?
• Is it making me a better mom?
• Is it loving to the other women I know?
• Is it contributing to a healthy family culture?
• Is it presenting a true telling of my life?
• Is it tempting me to boasting or pride?

You may wonder if something made me feel down about social media this year. You’d be right. It’s one of those Mother’s Days when thinking back reminds me of some painful moments of mothering. Facebook won’t show those to my friends list or remind me of them next year. But I know, and it’s made me freshly aware of the curated version of motherhood and family messages we’re all tempted to make.

We have plenty of tools and tips to edit our “real” into our “ideal.” And no one across the social media sphere would know. But our family would. We would. God would.

Here are 4 bold steps to manage Mother’s Day and Social Media

• Keep private moments out of the public eye. It keeps them precious between family. Some people in our lives don’t want treasured times to be diluted by sharing with the masses.
• Acknowledge your motivations. It may be good and a gift to family, but it may not be. When you consider what picture and words to share, who are you thinking of?
• Resist the urge to exaggerate or spin the truth. If you decide to share, tell it like it is without over-sharing. Lots of dramatic language is usually aimed at getting people to think we’re amazing and our life is so amazing. It’s rarely accurate.
• Take a social media break and use the time to spend with your loved ones. Social media has infiltrated our lives so we don’t realize its impact on our thinking. To reset your perspective and remove temptations to compare, take time away from the stream.

In the evening hours of Mother’s Day, I fear some of us scroll through photos, trying to like and comment, but seeing ourselves as “left out women.” Other’s feel like “loser moms.” Still others edit images and wrestle with words to post, feeling like “let down moms”—whose families didn’t make the day all they dreamed it would be. And there are women who post genuine words of gratitude with photos of true life lived as daughters, friends, sisters, grandmothers, moms, and friends—they’re in the stream of Mother’s Day posts too, celebrating good things. It can be a lot to go looking for the genuine, to not get bogged down, and to keep our messages sincere and in line with loving our neighbors as we love ourselves.

3 If’s to Manage Mother’s Day and Social Media

• If you POST on social media this Mother’s Day, be honest and be honorable about others and to others.
• If you SCROLL on social media this Mother’s Day, be loving to yourself and to your neighbors.
• If you KNOW social media isn’t a good place for you to be this Mother’s Day, it’s really okay to “take a break.”

You might also think more about friendship, singleness, and mothering.