To wonder why parents lie on social media?

[saveusernamee]

It’s rife, maybe I live/have lived under a rock.

Only recently noticing however that all these cutesy pictures of babies and children and cute captions, having me looking at them thinking how have I lucked out so badly with how difficult I find child rearing?

Then you message them privately and it all pours out, all the same crap you’re going through. Why not say ‘this was the only time my child smiled today so I took a picture’ why say ‘the bestest, most magical day with my precious little smiler’ ?

Every time I post something realistic literally nobody, or maybe an adorning aunt/grand parent engages with it but you post a photo of essentially a lie and everyone and their dog engages. Why?

People generally want to share positive stuff though. I rang mil today to say ds had a great report from school - I didn’t preface it by saying ‘you know he usually struggles.’

I’m not a fan of people who are constantly moaning about how hard it is being a parent though, especially on social media. I don’t post my kids on social media but I prefer seeing a smiley child with a caption saying ‘love going to the park with Olivia’ than a picture of a child with the caption ‘first time they smiled the whole day.’ That’s just depressing, what do you reply to that?

Not all of these parents are "lying", as you put it. My two were both incredibly easy babies who slept through the night by 3 months of age and weren't clingy. I certainly wasn't lying when I said that being a mother of babies was easy for me. Indeed, I found that if I was honest about how easy they were, I was excluded from social circles and characterised as being "smug". When you have young children, it feels like the only acceptable way to feel is exhausted and unhappy.

Now my kids are a bit older, one is still an angel. The other has additional needs. He's very good most of the time, but when I'm struggling I post in SEN groups or talk to other SEN mums for support. I wouldn't go into detail on my timeline, because that's not where I find support.

Not everybody is ‘competing for a crown’, some just like to share happy moments with others, and have them there to look back on. I don’t share things on Facebook often but I like it when they pop up on my memories in following years and it’s nice to focus on positive things or moments even on shitty days when the kids have been a nightmare.
Also the things you post are out there forever, will my son want to look back and see me bitching about him to strangers? No, but seeing moments I celebrated him wont be so awful.

I really don’t see the harm in it, if you do why not just unfollow people? Then everyone’s happy

It's a coping mechanism that often works for people. You focus all your attention on the good things in life then you find there is little brain space left to worry and think about the more difficult stuff. If bad stuff does happen it is often only momentary and then you can get back to focusing on the good things.

I know some people feel like it is annoying or fake but this way of thinking has got me through some very difficult things in my life, bereavements and cancer, for example. So I'm the opposite I run from head tilting 'empathy' in difficult situations. I don't want my worries or worst emotions to be validated!

I can't be arsed with Facebook etc, though. Would rather just live my life than document it all!

I mostly share positive things on my social media because why on earth would anyone want to have to deal with all the shitty bits of my life on top of their own difficulties? It’s not to present a perfect facade, it’s just that my demons are my own and I’m not going to inflict them on anyone else.

My children are grown up now so I don’t share anything about daily life with them, but if I had been on social media at the time I would also have focused on the happy, joyous, fulfilling side of it, not the relentlessness, drudgery and tiredness.

They are two extremes on social media. The everything is wonderful brigade and the 'woe is me' tribe. Both are equally inaccurate but only one is likely to try to drag you into competitive suffering.

There is a social media mum who would probably say she never lies but she does. It's just she has opted for a misery memoir view of parenthood rather than a hashtag-blessed view. It's just as tedious to see her negativity as it is to see others' unrelenting positivity.

Because that's the part of the day they want to remember. That''s the part of the day that was special to them and they want to share. Go and take a look at your parents photo albums when you were a child or think about letters or cards they may have sent to friends and family when you were small. They would have been full of smiling babies, first steps, trips out and funny anecdotes, wouldn't they? Not the general drudgery of life and the rubbish moments. This is the same.

Because why on earth would I post to say that the kids bickered the entire journey home from school until I sent them to their rooms - vs. the ridiculous, charming, goofy grin on their faces as they eat a cake the youngest made at school?

Surely every parent knows that children are both a trial and a joy, and why on earth would I want to share anything but the joy.

It's like cute cat pics - I want to see pretty, happy, adorable cats, not snarling, miffed because I'm cutting their nails ones!

@saveusernamee

That’s what I’ve been surprised at though.. not only do people post just the good bits but people only seem to engage with the good bits too.

It’s people saying I only want to show one fraction of a second of my life and I’m only interested in seeing a fraction of yours. Everything else that actually requires support/empathy can do one.

If someone posted something on SM that worried me then I'd message them tbh. Many people wouldn't want to discuss their problems with their whole friends list listening because they often include casual friends, work colleagues or nosey family that it's hard to say no to.

It also depends on people's motivation for using SM. My FB these day is pretty light and happy mainly my interests like cooking and people sharing pet photos sort of thing. I have unfollowed people who use SM differently- eg discussing politics because that's time consuming and after a while it gets me down reading bun fights

@Hardbackwriter

Also I wouldn't 'slag off' my children on social media any more than I would my husband or my mum, so I wouldn't post a picture of any of them smiling where I captioned it to point out that they'd otherwise been grumpy that day!

This. Personally I think the whinging posts are most annoying, I’d much rather see something positive.

I have a friend who constantly posts memories and photos about their many holidays. They never mention the 9-hour flight delay, or the foul-up with the hire car, or getting frisked at immigration by someone with a gun, or losing their apartment key, or having Montezuma's Revenge for a week, or the awful meal they had, or the cockroaches in their room, or leaving their mobile phone on the bus in a dodgy capital city somewhere. No, it's all silver sand and sunsets and loveliness as far as the eye can see...

I only have IG and don't post often but when I do it is to share something special like photos from events and nice places I have visited with my daughter. I suppose I could be considered to be doing what you describe but it's just how I use it and also what I want from it in return. I like checking IG to see positive things my friends have been doing and enjoying.

However I know full well there are less positive things going on in the background, that's a given, and not sharing that on SM doesn't mean someone is in denial or pretending to have a perfect life.

Everyone on social media paints themselves in a positive light, not just parents. Especially now that we get a daily dose of 'On This Day' memories - who wants an annual reminder of the day that their child was an utter monster. I don't get the gushing over partners though, I suspect that often hides problems. I'm in the best relationship I've ever had and I love the bones of him, but you wouldn't know from our Facebook feeds, where we basically just tag each other in fart memes.

@Hardbackwriter

Also I wouldn't 'slag off' my children on social media any more than I would my husband or my mum, so I wouldn't post a picture of any of them smiling where I captioned it to point out that they'd otherwise been grumpy that day!

Yes this is also very true. If I need to vent about my daughter I do it privately to close friends and family, it doesn't seem right to tell everyone on my SM.

SM is full of mad folk. Didn't Chrissy Tiegan post close up photos of herself crying in hospital about 10 seconds after she'd miscarried? I mean why? why would any sane person do that?

It's all about attention and look at meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

@KaptainKaveman

SM is full of mad folk. Didn't Chrissy Tiegan post close up photos of herself crying in hospital about 10 seconds after she'd miscarried? I mean why? why would any sane person do that?

It's all about attention and look at meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Yeah that's the thing, sharing the negative things can be just as, if not more, attention seeking than just sharing positive aspects..

It's not a lie, assuming that they didn't post a stock photo of a smiling baby in the place of their own child. People tend the document the things which they want to look back on, both personally and privately. My holiday photo albums might show beautiful landscape, nice food, smiling in front of landmarks, but doesn't include the time that we got lost, ran low on fuel and the petrol station we had identified was unexpectedly closed. And like with a screaming baby, we didn't think to take the camera out then anyway.

I also think it's more respectful to the child to share the best of them if sharing them in a public space. I don't really like sharing children on Youtube and social media, but if you are going to then surely it's kinder that they can look back and see their happy childhood rather than their family complaining about them online and sharing picture of them being upset.

No one posts the shit stuff. I had a really bad week last week. I broke an expensive item, lost a ring and drove my car into a wall. I didn't post them on social media. Social media is for the fun things and achievements not the day to day crap we all go through.

Social media is all about sharing what you want to share in a way that elicits the response you are hoping for. It’s a bit weird to think it is or even could be any more than that - people tend to have far too many “friends” on social media for most of them to be real friends. To try and use social media to get an idea of how your true friends are really thinking and feeling is lazy - you need to have a proper connection with them for that, not a social media account. Likewise, to use social media to assess how you should be thinking and feeling is ridiculous, given its obvious purpose. Why would someone who is not even a close friend of yours want to expose all their insecurities and worries to a possibly unsympathetic audience?

It's all the reasons people have already said about it being natural to only really post positive things about people they care about and publically (I have problems in my romantic relationship too sometimes but I only really share happy memories). I'm not a blogger, I'm not seeking to share intimate details with people, I'm just essentially collating a family photo album.

In terms of why people post positively about days that were actually challenging - probably because they're looking back at a lovely photo of their child at the end of a long day, their heart fills with love, and they are actively returning to a more positive outlook on it.

And in terms of why people engage more with positive posts - because it would be weird to "like" a post that is negative, like you're mocking the person. A negative post requires an actual comment and reaching out to the poster, rather than just a "that was nice" click.

Do your parents have photo albums while you were growing up? Were they the truth or highlights like your first day of school and happy smiley faces by the Xmas tree? While the quality and quantity of photos will have changed over the years thanks to technology, I think it's often common for the images to paint a very different reality. For example I bet that Rose and Fred West will have happy pics getting married or eating Christmas dinner

@toastofthetown

It's not a lie, assuming that they didn't post a stock photo of a smiling baby in the place of their own child. People tend the document the things which they want to look back on, both personally and privately. My holiday photo albums might show beautiful landscape, nice food, smiling in front of landmarks, but doesn't include the time that we got lost, ran low on fuel and the petrol station we had identified was unexpectedly closed. And like with a screaming baby, we didn't think to take the camera out then anyway.

I also think it's more respectful to the child to share the best of them if sharing them in a public space. I don't really like sharing children on Youtube and social media, but if you are going to then surely it's kinder that they can look back and see their happy childhood rather than their family complaining about them online and sharing picture of them being upset.

I agree with all this, also. The first part is spot on, as is the second bit about respect.

I'm not the kind of parent who objects to posting their children on SM at all as I know many are, but they are essentially being posted without consultation or any awareness that they're going to grow up to be comfortable with pictures of them being shared, so it seems kinder to only post the kind of thing that they likely wouldn't be upset or embarrassed by when they get older.

If that makes people happy and get the energy to tackle hard reality in everyday life, why not?

I get what you mean, OP. Posting a photo of your kids smiling holding an ice cream when they've been a pain for the rest of the day out - perfectly understandable and no different from showing people actual photos back in the day.

The endless #blessed #parentinggoals #livingmybestlife, 'another perfect day with this one' bollocks is more like deliberate, sustained image-management, which is one thing if you're selling a brand, but it's pretty shit if you're just selling a fake life to your actual friends!