I unfollowed all momfluencers on social media. They were making me feel like a bad mom.

• I'm a mom of three kids and I've decided to unfollow momfluencers.

• When someone only shares the picture-perfect moments I feel like I'm not doing enough.

• I want to enjoy my moments with my kids more, instead of comparing them with someone else's.

Momfluencers are turning their followers into customers, in what the Center on Digital Culture and Society at Penn's Annenberg School for Communication calls a multimillion-dollar industry. One that often involves aspirational bread-making and happily nurturing many neutrally-clad "littles," all with a smile and the impression of ease. That parenting is easy, simple, and aesthetically pleasing are just some of the false impressions this particular brand of influencer gives.

But I'm no longer interested in buying what they are selling.

I felt like I wasn't doing enough

I know parenting is hard and messy (and extremely colorful, from the crayons on the wall to the vomit on the carpet) because I'm a parent of three young kids. And when I follow any parent who only shows the best parts, I start to feel like I'm not doing enough.

Don't get me wrong: I love Instagram. But it is terrible for my mental health to spend hours in a parasocial relationship, longing for an impossible life and leaving these one-sided interactions feeling shame — that I don't do enough, buy enough, or spend enough time (for example) surfing with my children.

I am not immune to being influenced. From the moment I found out I was pregnant with my first child, I started following moms on social media — and ended up spending hundreds of dollars on clothing and gear that I thought would solidify the "right" mom aesthetic.

I've also been influenced to make certain parenting decisions — like setting up an art cart, thinking it was the only way to make sure my kids had access to constant creative opportunities that all it set me up for was the stress of paint and glitter everywhere.

I have felt like my house is too small, and my decor isn't creating the coziest possible childhood memories. One friend was so fed up with how her child couldn't stand having her hair brushed that she was influenced to buy an expensive brush specifically formulated for "tender-headed children" (shockingly, this didn't magically make her child love hair brushing time).

All we share are little moments of our lives

I'm not saying influencers or fellow parents are trying to make us feel bad about ourselves, but that is still often the result. I understand that we all want to share the beauty in the mundane. If you saw my Instagram, you'd think I spend all my days happily exploring nature and gardening with my children, when in reality, I'm capturing a beautiful shot of a beautiful moment with my kids — which is exactly that: one moment. I'm not showing that right after that photo was taken, one child hit another. Or that we ran out of snacks on that nature trail, and everyone was whining. Or that, as much as I enjoy hiking with my kids, sometimes I would rather do it alone. And when we miss that nuance, we miss out on what makes us human.

I find that even on momfluencer accounts that opt for honesty and share more balance, I still end up feeling bad about myself thanks to the comment section. There is always someone lurking there, waiting to shame these influencers (and by extension other readers) for sharing their parenting struggles.

I even feel this way when seeing certain posts from friends or acquaintances on social media. I'm not saying I don't want to hear about their amazing family vacation to Mexico, but I'd rather hear about it over a cup of coffee, where there is more nuance, and we can share in the hard parenting moments (like their kid having diarrhea on the plane) along with the good ones.

Sometimes life hands over such pure moments of joy that I'm astounded I get the gift of experiencing them: A summer patio dinner with good friends, the first bite of a chocolate ganache cake, watching my child perform so beautifully in their school concert that it makes me cry, an outdoor yoga class in the fresh spring breeze. But life is not made up of only perfect moments. Sometimes, it hands me one kid vomiting off their top bunk at 3 a.m. while I'm in bed with COVID-19, yet another rejection letter, and seemingly endless gray days. My life is full of human experiences, good and bad.

On social media, there are too many versions of the lives we could lead and the parenting choices we could make. So, I'm doubling down on my efforts to parent from my own perspective. We've all heard the saying, "Comparison is the thief of joy," so I'm about to free up a lot of comparison time and replace it with more time savoring my own moments of joy — not wishing I was experiencing someone else's.

Read the original article on Business Insider