The Science Baby

Social media can be a great tool for discovering new people and new things (including maybe this podcast and blog?!) but it has a dark side. The “algorithm” which determines exactly what social media content you see is a highly efficient beast of hyerconnectivity. It can reveal things about your inner wants, desires, and fears that you didn’t even realse yourself. And if used indiscriminately, it can be damaging to the mental health of new parents.

In this episode, Kim and Leila talk about how, since starting our parenting journeys, our social media feeds have been really weird.

What to Expect in Episode 4

Social media can be a great tool for discovering new stuff, but for new, impressionable, and unsure parents, it can often do more harm than good. 

We can’t really escape the fact that we are living through a whole new era of communication and connectivity, which Leila has dubbed the ‘social media-pocene’ (there’s probably a better word for it!). Much of our behvaiour and psychology is shaped by our interactions on social media, and while its effects on young people have been well reported, what’s less often acknowledged is how it affects other people going through impressionable times of their lives.

We dive into how the hidden algorithm behind our social media feeds actually works. It’s probably not that your microphone is secretly listening to your conversations, but rather it’s making instantaneous connections between little breadcrumbs of preference you scatter when you interact online. More nefariously, the algorithms are testing out new stuff on you all the time, to find the kind of content that will keep you engaged. Unfortunately, that’s often fear and dissent.

Kim and Leila have both noticed how their social media feeds have changed throughout their parenting journeys. Kim has seen extremely emotive films, tragic stories of child loss, and now…dead cats?! Leila’s baby loss was accompanied by content of others’ losses and fertility journeys, but keeps coming back to fearmongering stories of spotting fatal illnesses in children.

But one thing we’ve noticed is that content online is becoming more graphic, and much less filtered. While it’s great that people are using their platforms to sensitively talk through the traumatic times in their lives, like pregnancy and baby loss, there is another type of account, probably run by bots, that’s designed to farm engagement for money. But now there’s another type of content that’s on the rise, which is the unfiltered, real stories that are just so much more graphic than they used to be. We think this has come about because of the way young people have grown up to communicate online, because they lack a community to do it in real life.

We might not admit it, but we all compare ourselves to others. It turns out that this is a fundamental human trait, to try and situate ourselves in a social hierarchy. But with social media algorithms in the mix, it’s just reinforcing our prejudices. While we know all content online is curated and crafted, it’s often the first thing we forget.

We end the episode by discussing what we can do to protect ourselves. While tackling the invisible, unknowable algorithm is a dark art, we do have some tools at our disposal. And the best advice remains – step away from the phone!

Listen to The Episode

👉 You can watch and listen to Episode 4 right here

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