Mom Blogger Faces Criticism for Posting About Her Son’s Low Popularity on Instagram
"Your kid will need therapy because of you."
Mom of five Katie Bower is getting slammed online after a controversial Instagram post went viral Monday. In her original post, which has since been deleted, the mommy blogger expressed concern about her six-year-old son Weston’s lack of popularity on social media.
“Guys I am gonna be perfectly honest. Instagram never liked my Munchkin and it killed me inside. His photos never got as many likes. Never got comments,” she wrote, going on to say, “From a statistical point of view, he wasn’t as popular with everyone out there.”
Parents everywhere, including the 52,000 followers of Bower’s blog Bower Power, quickly reacted on social media, criticizing the Atlanta mom for exploiting her child and for caring so much about his online popularity. Comments ranged from the horrified (“She alone is responsible for any deficits to her son’s self esteem. Kids are not trophies to be paraded about to earn likes for their cuteness”) to the outraged (“Why don’t you trade him in for a kid that will get you more likes? I’m sure we can find him a mum who doesn’t care about the IG algorithm.”).
Even celeb mama of two Chrissy Teigen was appalled, tweeting, “Oh. My. God. What in the hell??”
Bower responded in a tearful Instagram story, explaining that her words were taken out of context and that she was simply making a point that the numbers don’t matter. “I decided to talk about it because I learned a valuable lesson … that our value doesn’t depend on someone else seeing our worth. Everyone can see the likes and comments. And as a parent, those numbers mean absolutely nothing.”
She ended the series of videos by saying, “Unfortunately this is sometimes the way it goes with social media if you choose to be vulnerable and show something that isn’t perfect about yourself.”
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