Inflated Importance

and the epidemic of social-media distracted moms... aka me.

As with anything and everything I’ve ever posted on my podcast or written about - this comes not from a place of condemnation. It comes from a place of self reflection because… this busy-for-seemingly-no-real-reason-but-to-inflate-my-own-ego-and-importance mom, was me for so many years. The Lord do be working on me, and it’s not comfortable. Sometimes it’s honestly painful.

I’m writing about this busy mom epidemic because I wish I had read this 11 years ago when I first became a mother. I wish someone came with facts, hard truth, and called me out on my BS. So, here we go. Me speaking to the younger-self me.

Yesterday I hopped on instagram for a few moments. Admittedly, I shouldn’t have gotten on at all but it’s an addiction I’m trying to break and sometimes I relapse. But, I digress.

When scrolling stories an account that I genuinely enjoy - mom who shares about homeschooling, some homemaking, and often some news and politics posted something that hit me in the soul. She posted a screen shot of a text message between her and a fellow “content creator”, flustered because there were so many congressional hearings, presidential press conferences, just over all the level of news she “needs” to cover and how she can’t keep up with the current administrations pace of news and headlines. The part that hit me in the soul, because I can remember multiple instances of something like this myself, was when she said had just caught her small child doing something really unsanitary, possibly even dangerous, seemingly while she was distracted with following national news and headlines to be able to relay it to her followers.

This mom was me. Is me.

Thankfully and painfully, I recently got smacked over the head with a harsh reality from the Lord and honestly I am writing now, for myself. As a reminder to go back and read when the beast of addiction rears its ugly head when I inevitably try to run away from the reality of life and throw my face into my phone.

What I need to hear constantly is: You are not truly important to anyone but God, your husband, your kids, and your closest family and friends. Spend your finite time accordingly.

It’s a constant battle that can often lend to me falling into extremes - I am defined by my identity in Christ, am allowed to have hobbies and extracurriculars but so often with social media we inflate our importance and identity because we have a lot of followers, or likes, or DMs. The opposite of this is also true when we degrade our importance to *only* doing housework, tending to small children so much that we loose ourselves in motherhood. Both extremes are true and both extremes I have found myself falling into on occasion. What can I say is, I am not one to dip my toe into anything. Historically and to a fault, I am a woman of extremes and balance is not a word that frequents my vocabulary.

When I read about this mom and how she was feeling this “need” to keep up with political news to share with her followers - yes, maybe their family makes some much needed income off of her endeavors but also - as in my case, and many cases from a lot of moms I have spoken to, they might not need it in the true sense of the word. (Need meaning without that income they cannot put food on the table, clothe their family, or keep the lights on or roof over their head - our world has warped the definition of need to include fancy coffees often or whatever other want we claim we need). She, like me, might be searching for some sort of validation of her worth that comes through the dopamine hit of likes, follows and the screen.

I know I did. I do. God help me with this need for my worth to be affirmed by others instead of You.

Now, I know ordo amoris has recently gotten some headline news and I have almost written a book on my… frustrations… with the Pope’s recent letter to US bishops and it’s currently sitting in the drafts section of this sub stack, but, ordo amoris comes into play here too.

Satan do be working via social media, especially on women, in a society that has told us for decades that “just” being a mom is a waste of time and talent. Satan uses this disruptive feminism AND social media to distract and warp our priorities which end up leading to burn out or even neglect of our God ordained duties - like the emotional, social, intellectual and physical wellbeing of the people in our real lives God has gifted to be in our care.

Ordo Amoris means the “order of love” and it’s an ancient Christian teaching coined by St Augustine. This means prioritizing your love in the right way based on proximity of those the Lord has placed in your life. On a basic level that would mean - God first, then spouse, then kids, then people outside your home but closest to you (community), State, Country, then others. Exceptions to that would be if you’re walking down the street and someone you don’t know gets hit by a car while crossing the street, based on proximity and need - their needs now trump going to get groceries for your kids in that moment. The concept as a whole makes sense. You wouldn’t pay to keep the heat bill on for someone in Thailand while your own bill, and family, is neglected. (The Pope seems to disagree with this on some levels and I definitely disagree with the Pope, but that is a post for another time.)

When we use social media, whether we realize it or not, we are inverting this order of love. Now, people who are potentially on the other side of the world are getting our attention, often over our own children. The dirty laundry or healthy food making is being pushed aside so we can answer DMs with humans we otherwise would never know existed if it weren’t for a social media app. We spend hours face to a screen each week while we, maybe, spend one hour in mass with the Creator of the Universe and the Creator who loves us so much He grants us each breath we take. We witness horrific terrorist attacks, war, natural disasters - that might even lead us to donate $5 or $10 here or there, while our lonely elderly neighbors need our company.

This leads me to this hard reality - we really aren’t that important, at all. We are incredibly important to God and to those in those proper order of love that are closest to us and rightfully deserving of the majority of our love and charity but as you escape out of those closest circles to you, you really aren’t that important. Even if you work a 9-5 job. Even if you are a CEO of a company. Even if you’re in the military. Even if you work at your parish. If anything happens to you, they will replace you almost instantly. The show must go on. If something happens to you your neighbors will move on relatively quickly. If you die tomorrow, your Instagram followers will think “oh that’s sad”, maybe leave a comment or donate to a fundraiser and move on.

If something happens to you tomorrow, your husband, your kids, and your immediate close circles will be changed forever. The loss of you will wreck them and they will never fully recover. It is in these relationships that our time, talent, love and attention should be primarily focused on.

We only have so many hours in a day, so much money to spend, and so much energy to invest in others - when we are using it online we are taking precious, valuable, and finite resources away from the people the Lord has placed in our actual lives, people who we are meant to walk with to Heaven, on strangers.

I believe we should have hobbies, do fun things for ourselves but when we invert the order of love in our lives, turn social media use into things we “must” do because somehow we’re important for bringing the news to others or spreading the faith or helping others get healthy or whatever “platform” we have decided we should stand on to be God’s gift to the world.

The reality is - if you stopped posting on social media today, no one would care. Sure, you might get a few DMs asking where you’ve been but the reality is, no one really cares. You know who does care about your presence? The husband and marriage that needs your attention. The tiny humans you’re neglecting emotionally, spiritually, and sometimes even physically, because you’re scrolling on the internet or interacting with strangers on social media.

Distracted parenting has been proven to have a negative impact on children’s social and emotional development. We don’t need a study to show that though. Just based on screen time or physical reality - when our face is in our phones, our ego and sense of self-importance being inflated by social media what is the message to our kids? Strangers on the internet and whatever is on my phone is more important than you.

I have some questions I’ve been pondering (almost) every time I pick up my phone and think to log in to Instagram or X (because those are my 2 attention sucks), maybe they can help you too:

• Have I spent time in the Word of God yet today? How much time have I spent to day listening to faith-centric content? Have I prayed a rosary yet today? If I haven’t been in scripture or in touch with the Holy Spirit then I have no excuse to be wasting time on social media regardless of whatever self-inflated "mission” I have told myself I have on those apps.

• Does my social media use of my time overshadow the total amount of time I am spending one on one with each of my kids? With a precious 15 minutes with each of my 4 kids I could read a book, cuddle, talk about life, give them much needed physical touch, words of affirmation, or heart-to-heart encouragement. We all know 1 hour is easy to get sucked into social media without even realizing it.

• What are my God ordained priorities in my day today? Have I accomplished those things before I reach for the distorted affirmation of likes and follows on social media?

• What am I running away from? Is there something in life that I need to take to the Lord and process instead of shoving it aside and drowning my emotional or mental struggles in scrolling?

• Do my children see a phone in my hand more than they make true, focused eye contact with them? Do I act in a way that shows my children that the phone and whatever is on it is more important than them?

• Do I have phone-free zones in my house? If not, I need to make a real effort to create them.

I think this is just the tip of the iceberg in this discussion. I think there are so many things that could be talked about like how our hearts and minds were not meant to know every headline across the world at any given time. How the idea that “if I am on social media I might as well be making money” is doing so much more harm than good. How using social media to spread the Gospel is a good and possibly true calling but just like the calling of the priesthood is a rare one, I think that one is too. I think it takes a very disciplined, focused, and special human to be able to use social media without experiencing the damaging effects of it. I think most of us fool ourselves into thinking we are evangelizing on social media when in reality we are stroking our own egos, running away from real life, and investing precious time and energy into strangers over our own family.

The reality is - for how little time we spend in meditation, scripture, prayer and mass and how much time we spend on social media there is no way for us to properly discern if being on social media if actually God-directed because we’re spending God time as phone time.

This doesn’t even go into the proven damaging effects that social media has on women, our self esteem, marriages, ease of infidelity, depression and anxiety.

So, with that. Put the phone down and away. Set boundaries. Love the humans closest to you. I’m trying to. You should too.