Are We Changing The Way We Cherish Family Memories?

Whenever I look at feeds on social media, mainly Instagram, I’m constantly bombarded with posts about how people are making family memories and then I see the word AD.

Firstly let me just say that I have absolutely no problem with social media influencers, bloggers, and vloggers etc making money from their feeds. I earn money from my blog and social media channels too. In fact, you’ll probably see the word ‘AD’ quite often on my blog or social media feeds, but the thing that gets me is the image that is quite often portrayed alongside these adverts.

As a blogger I know first hand exactly how difficult it can be to even encourage your children to be in a photo, let alone asking them to do it a certain way or say a certain phrase for a promotional video. I’m just as guilty as other influencers of asking my children to take part in these paid campaigns. Some will say it’s wrong, others won’t have a problem with it. That’s life and everyone is entitled to their view.

What I wonder is should these types of photos that are accompanied by the word ‘AD’ even be trying to portray ‘perfect family memories’?

I mean, for me, there’s nothing better than capturing a natural photograph of my children doing something they enjoy, but when you’re being paid to create the same image in exchange for money, is it really making family memories? Should it be shared in a way that claims to be natural when in fact it’s clearly an advert and not a natural capture?

I mean most of these photos probably take a huge amount of bribery to even get your kids to pose in the photo in the first place. It’s completely staged and quite often it comes across that way too. There’s nothing natural about it, yet influencers claim it to be just that.

The truth is these photos are all designed to make people money and that’s absolutely fine, but I think these images are affecting peoples mental health, self esteem and undermining their confidence. It is no surprise that the younger generation is moving away from social media platforms such as Instagram in search of a normal life.

The reality of making family memories is to put your phone away and start talking and playing with your children not spending the day glued to your phone making sure the next Instagram story is uploaded of how you have created another family memory. Sadly this is the world we are heading towards. A social media family memory world.

As parents we are messing up so much of this world for our children without a care or a thought to the long term effects it could possibly have. We have made a mess of the environment and now if I’m totally honest it’s all but too late to try to put it right, and it’s going to take a lot of hard work to reverse the effects of plastic in this world if we ever manage it.

We are yet to see the long term effects that social media will have on our children because it is still very much in its infancy and we, the human race, as per normal, are already abusing it.

We’re portraying a fake life and this will in turn have major issues I believe on our children. I hear young children not posting a photo because it won’t be Instagram worthy. What the hell does that mean?

The problem is many people that post the perfect photos of their kids to advertise brands have spent hours on photoshop perfecting it. It’s not even close to the original photo. Parents today are portraying a reality that if your kids are not smiling in a perfect pose then it shouldn’t be on social media.

In truth when your children look back at what they consider the perfect family memory it will be that it took 50 photos and a parent getting irritated and annoyed because their kids wouldn’t stand still or all the kids didn’t smile at the same time.

So many Influencer parents today are caught up in the belief that family memories are being created on Instagram or other social media channels. The chances are their children will grow up to remember those trips or holidays that involved hours of having photos taken because mummy or daddy were being paid to advertise a product and most likely be thinking wouldn’t it have been nice if mummy or daddy had just put their phones away and noticed that I wanted a childhood that wasn’t recorded all over the Internet.

What do you think? Is social media just a fake life for a fake world with fake people that are missing something from their lives so much so that they need the comfort of likes to make themselves feel better about themselves? Should these people be looking at what is missing from their own lives that they need the fake adulation and validation of social media?

I would like to say that yes, I have used my children in the promotion of brands, but this is something that I am beginning to think is a mistake and a total injustice to my children. Nowadays I think much more carefully about what my children are involved with when it comes to advertising a brand.

Creating a family memory is not a photo to post all over social media. It’s a thought that lives in the mind forever and something that you will talk about in years to come, and when you re-tell the story it will always be a little bit different. That’s how families create memories.

The biggest dangers of social media and our children as they grow up is that they end up removing themselves from the real world and believe that their lives are defined by what they see or post on social media channels such as Instagram. If that happens the blame will land firmly with us as parents for not showing our children real life and encouraging them to learn personal skills face to face and not screen to screen. The dangers are there for all to see, but so many parents are ignoring them just for a quick buck.

Earlier this year, research was released that social media and in particular Instagram, Facebook and snapchat are all harming children’s mental health and this will start before the age of ten. Here is the full report. We are not taking responsibility as parents and allowing our children far too much screen time. As parents we should be taking our responsibility seriously and not integrate and allow social media to dominate every single moment of our children’s lives.

I would love to hear your thoughts, in the comments below.