Are social media algorithms feeding our parenting anxieties?

**SPEAKER_2** (0:02)
This is a podcast by The Straits Times.

**Vanessa Chelvan** (0:09)
Hi, I'm Vanessa Chelvan, and welcome to The Mother Load. This is a space for honest conversations about the juggle, the 9 to 5, the 5 to 9, and everything in between. Real talk about the mess and the magic of being a working mum. When our mums had questions, they called their mum, or neighbours, or they just figured it out.
Today, we have TikToks, Instagram Reels, Reddit threads, constantly telling us how we can optimize mothering and how we're doing everything wrong.
So today we're asking, is social media actually helping us be better mothers, or is it making us more anxious ones? With me today is Huda Rashid, a mother of two and very soon three. She is founder of The Mum Collective Singapore, a community that brings mothers together through mum circles held every few months. Huda, welcome to the podcast.

**Huda Rashid** (1:03)
Hello, thank you for having me today.

**Vanessa Chelvan** (1:05)
And my next guest is someone many may know from her work in public service. Rahayu Mahzam is Minister of State, Ministry of Digital Development and Information and Ministry of Health. But today we're speaking to her in her other capacity, mum.
Rahayu, thanks for joining us.

**Rahayu Mahzam** (1:23)
Thank you for having me too, Vanessa. And nice to meet you, Huda.

**Vanessa Chelvan** (1:26)
You're welcome. So I think most of us will agree, right, that social media has been genuinely useful for parenting, finding your tribe, getting advice at 2 a.m. when you're desperate, and discovering communities that you never would have found otherwise. But there's another side to all this, right? At some point, these helpful tips become overwhelming, and just that sheer volume of information means you can go way down a rabbit hole.
Milk brands, milestone tracking, sleep schedules, pumping output, like ICU, you know, you know, smiling, there's speech development, there's so many, so many things. When does all this stop feeling like support and start feeling like pressure?

**Huda Rashid** (2:14)
I think it's very individual.
It really depends on your capacity at that point in time, your state of mind, what you're actually going through. If you're feeling supported as a mom, I think you'd be able to handle the influx of information better. But if you're heavily sleep deprived, you are already very anxious, I think information gets overloaded very, very quickly, and then it becomes unhelpful, state of mind basically. I think as with anything, if you're entering an important meeting, frazzled versus if you're entering an important meeting, calm and steady, so it's similar. Rahayu?

**Rahayu Mahzam** (2:57)
I personally feel that motherhood and pregnancy is underrated, and as it is, as an experience itself, it's already very challenging, very difficult. So if you go into a space and you come in with the hope of, you're seeking out certain things, and if you go to the right sort of circles, then you end up getting this what you need, then that's fine and good. But if you end up just maybe comparing yourself, and you are looking at things in a certain frame where you're already feeling very small, and then that just exacerbates the situation, then you will kind of come out with some negative outcomes. So I think it really is a function of, really like what Huda says, your state of mind, and I think that control that you bring in into the space.
But having said that, it's easy to say, but not easy to experience or do, because we can never control how we are at any juncture, at any point in time. So I think the reality is that we've got to forgive ourselves, and the mothers in the space, because it in itself is hard. I just feel that also because social media, there are certain features of it, that kind of lends to it being a bit more of, if you don't know it well and don't use it well, say, algorithms will kind of stir you in a certain direction, and or if you kind of like go to the wrong spaces, you know, don't think about what you're actually asking, then you steer to a certain direction. So I think it's really about being aware at all times, but it's also not easy to do.

**Vanessa Chelvan** (4:42)
I mean, the answer is it depends, right?
I guess people, most mums are not really aware. They're gonna be like, right, okay, let's look inside. How are we feeling today before it starts rolling? They're just like, I need a break from this mess. And then, you know, you start going. So I think that awareness may be something that might help.