Social Media 04: Influencers Change The World Transcript
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Laura Wifler: Hey friends, Laura Wifler here, and welcome to another episode of Risen Motherhood. My sister-in-law, Emily, will be joining me in a couple of minutes, but first, I just wanted to tell you guys a little bit about the show that you're going to be listening to next. This is a unique one. It's actually a live show that we gave at The Gospel Coalition’s Women's Conference last June, in 2021.
This talk was really what started us down the path of wanting to do a whole mini-series on it—the series that you're listening to right now—because, originally when we were thinking through this content, we thought, well, we really want to talk about what it's like to be a mom in the digital age and what has changed in motherhood because of all of us having these online presences.
This talk is about influencers and what it means to have influence, what it means to receive influence. I hope you find it really interesting. It was really, really fun to talk about and to think about. You are going to hear us jump in in the middle. Because this is a live show, we ended up cutting out a couple of things in the beginning. You're going to just hear it jump right in. Bear with us there.
The next thing I wanted to note—this is silly, but as Emily and I listened back, we realized that we noted that Angelina Jolie and J.LO are influencers that our moms might have looked up to in motherhood. Then we realized, when we were talking later, they didn't really have children until way later after our moms would've had children.
Just bear with us as we made that note—that was a little faux pas on our part. There are plenty of other A-lister stars and celebrities that we know that our moms ended up looking up to, but that was one of those things where we were just like, oh, who's about their age? Those were the people that came to mind, but we recognize that they might not be the best examples.
Just a quick reminder that if you have not downloaded the "Wake Up" workbook yet, it is an inventory about your social media use, where you can think more deeply about these topics. I encourage you to sign up for our email list over on risenmotherhood.com/newsletter. That's where you can sign up and get access to the Vault, a place where we keep all of our free downloads for you guys in one spot so you can find them all really easy and you can download that workbook. We do have questions that go along with today's show to help you think more critically about this topic and all the other topics that we've been talking about. Check that out. Again—risenmotherhood.com/newsletter. Let's get to the show.
Laura: The first question I have for you guys is: please raise your hand if you have ever felt guilt in motherhood. Literally every hand in the room, and you better—
Emily Jensen: —Just get comfortable on this quiz. You’re going to be raising your hand a lot.
Laura: Okay, raise your hand if you've ever felt like you failed your kids. Yep, every hand. If you've ever wondered where the past 24 hours went and you are just shocked—I saw so many hands already! I love that! We'll just do it. Where did the past 24 hours go? We'll do that. I love it. Another one is: raise your hand if motherhood is completely different than what you pictured.
The last couple of questions you don't have to raise your hand on, but I just want you to think about this because it's going to tie into what we're talking about today: motherhood in a digital age or media age. I can't remember what we titled it, but something about media and digital. The last couple of questions: do you fall asleep looking at social media? You don't have to raise your hand. Do you wake up looking at social media?
Then we want you to think specifically about the moms that you follow on social media. You probably follow a lot of people—friends, family—but think about the moms and the ones that you're getting your information from. What does her motherhood look like? What kind of mom would you say that she is?
Emily: Just hold on to your answers from that quiz for a little bit, because we're going to come back to it later.
As Laura said, we really wanted to talk about motherhood in a digital age because, whether or not we realize it, all of the things that are happening on social media—the new age of mom influencers, micro-celebrities—all of that is affecting our motherhood. We are just going to take some time today to look at the history of mom influencers.
We're going to talk a little bit about where that came from. Laura's got some great research and history pulled together. We're going to look at that and then we're going to examine maybe some of the good things that this mom influencer culture is bringing to our lives and some of the bad things and some of the things that aren't that helpful. Of course, like we typically do, we want to bring in the hope of gospel and really ask: is influence a bad thing? Is it a good thing? Why or why not?
We have some applications and some things we've been talking about as we've been trying to navigate this culture. I think before we get too deep, we want to say that Risen Motherhood seeks to be a mom influencer in so many ways, right? We're online, we're sharing posts.
We hope that when somebody's in the checkout line or they are picking up their child from school and they're scrolling on their phone or they're up in the middle of the night nursing that what they're running across is hope, and it's something that's going to point them to eternal truth. Obviously, even though we're going to be breaking down the mom influencer culture, we just want you to know that we do think that it could be used for good.
Laura: We recognize that we're talking about ourselves. Okay, we want to go back and do a little bit of history for you guys. We're going to start with the date that some of you may not remember, but right when the internet started, and, shockingly—it is weird because Emily and I are old enough now that I feel like we have a history that the youngest of moms do not have, which is weird.
It's interesting to look back at our lives and the moms that our mothers would look at—it was really the moms who were influencing motherhood that were just a subset of like, maybe 50 celebrities if you think about it. Our moms were looking at people like Angelina Jolie or Jennifer Lopez. Who else? Princess Diana, right. There were very few. You saw very little glimpses of their motherhood. What they showed you was what they wanted to show you. It was teeny tiny bits, but they were influencing the motherhood culture.
As time went on to the age of the internet—and this is whenever Emily and I started reading blogs and stuff—mommy bloggers had the big heyday. There were these long-form articles with maybe a picture or two where moms were finally starting to open up. Now it wasn't the celebrities who were showing this little slice. They were telling it all. It was really raw. It was really vulnerable. They were talking about PPD or they were talking about what postpartum—
Emily: —Telling their birth stories in really big detail. They were sharing methods for parenting.
Laura: Usually pretty humorous, but moms were super grateful that people were talking about things that they had never talked about before in mom culture. There was this breath of fresh air, but then in 2010—and this is when Emily and I both actually started blogging. I don't know if everybody knows it, but we used to blog pre-Risen Motherhood—but in 2010, that's when picturesque—like, this beautiful picture of motherhood entered. I don't know what it is, but I was reading about the science of the internet, and something allowed the internet—someone improved the internet—to where you could have more pictures.
Emily: That was around the time Instagram came up. We were like, oh, we can alter the photos of our kids—
Laura: —Instagram launched in 2010.
Emily: —to look really cute and fuzzy. Remember the ones that are, like, fuzzy?
Laura: With the glow and the white nurseries…motherhood was like—we're authentic, but we're beautiful and perfect. That has been 2010 all the way to about the past couple of years where there's almost been like this divide, and I don't if you guys have noticed it, but essentially, there's still this picturesque, beautiful version of motherhood that you can find in a lot of feeds where it's got five kids lined up in a row in front of the garage and they're all wearing matching outfits. Everyone's smiling. You're like, how on earth?
It's like you just scroll and their kids are perfect every single picture. There's that side where you have these perfect moms, and then you have this other side that's developed—because I think consumer demand has asked for it—where we've returned to our roots of that authentic, raw motherhood. I scrolled through one day and you can watch—I can't even believe this—you can watch a live birth on Instagram, like literally, on Instagram Live, having birth. You just need to be prepared for that. I think that it's amazing now because some moms are offering both this authenticity and also this perfection, and there are these two sides where these moms at the top, they've really done a great job. They’ve started to monetize their motherhood.
They look like they're a mom and they look like they're doing it out of their kitchen, and they might be, but you can't tell that they have a whole team of people behind them. They've got the nanny and they've got someone helping with cleaning their home and they have—
Emily: They have professional photographers, professional photo shoots.
Laura: PR consultants.
Emily: PR people. They're professional moms.
Laura: They're running multi-million dollar businesses out of their motherhood. It might look like just motherhood, but they're being professional moms, and that's the side that we don't see or we don't recognize, and now these women have brand partnerships. They're doing product development. They develop, like, hair ties and it feels a little bit like, if I buy this hair tie, I'm going to be a really good mom like them. Anyway, go ahead.
Emily: I think what's interesting is that even if what—okay, let's back up. Some of you guys right now have people that you follow that are coming to mind immediately, like, oh, I know who this is. Maybe they have millions of followers or hundreds of thousands of followers. Even if you don't, you may not realize you're still influenced by what that top tier of moms are doing.
Laura and I—as we were talking about it, this scene came to mind from the movie The Devil Wears Prada. I don't know if you guys have seen that. Essentially, they're getting ready to illustrate and what—we'll say it in a minute, but like how it is that these top mom influencers are actually the ones determining what you would see on the shelf at Target or what's trending on Etsy or what kind of pacifier is popular right now, what kind of swaddle is. And not just that, but also beliefs and practices. Anyways, Devil Wears Prada.
Laura: The Devil Wears Prada. We were both like, oh, my word, this is The Devil Wears Prada because there's this great scene and—go home and watch it if you haven't seen it yet because it's just a great movie. Anne Hathaway is this new intern or new employee working for Meryl Streep, who is the Vogue lead editor. I think that's right. Anne Hathaway is scoffing because they're deciding between these two belts, and they look identical. They look identical to me, and she's just like, "Why are you laboring over this decision? This is ridiculous."
She's wearing this frumpy, blue sweater because—if you know Anne's role in this, she's not fashionable at all and is now working at this high-end fashion magazine. I'm going to jump in halfway through because Meryl Streep is noticing that she's scoffing at this and she just says to her, "You think this has nothing to do with you. This has everything to do with you." The sweater is not just blue, and Meryl Streep goes, "And then cerulean"—so not a blue sweater—"cerulean blue quickly showed up in the collections of eight different fashion designers."
"It filtered down through the department stores and it trickled on down to some tragic casual corner where you no doubt fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs. It's sort of comical how you think you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the very people in this room from a pile of stuff."
Emily: We just really felt like that illustrated what's going on when we are shopping on Amazon, shopping on Target, and we think, "Oh, I'm not influenced by them. I'm making my own choice," when really a lot of this has a tremendous, trickle-down effect. Lauren and I were reminiscing about when we had our first child that Baby-Led Weaning was this big conversation that was happening.
Laura: Does anyone remember that?
Emily: We felt like this is something we came up with, but if we really trace it back, it was making the rounds on Pinterest. This was something that was really big on blogs. I was like, "I don't think I've heard anybody talk about that in a few years."
Laura: I don’t think young moms are into Baby-Led Weaning, but that was all the rage when we were with our newborns and young kids.
Emily: Actually, in the last year, an illustration of this is the Always Pan. I don't know if you guys bought that, but I bet if you were on social media, all of you saw that come up on your newsfeed. It's like that really pretty, one-color, ceramic pan. It's beautiful. Did you get one?
Laura: I didn't get it, but I want one. I'm being influenced. [Laughter]
Emily: That would be one example. They actually took their pans straight to the influencers. Just bypassed traditional advertising and it was everywhere and it sold like crazy. Some other things you might be doing as a mom in the last year—are you baking bread? Are you using a baby wrap? Do you use a brown, natural pacifier? Do you send Farmgirl Flowers? Do you like to receive Farmgirl Flowers? Do you want to wear a dress with white tennis shoes while you're mom-ing? Do you like all-white bedding? (I had all-white bedding once before a toddler came and hung out on my bed and then it's not all white anymore.) Do you put vitamin C on your skin? Have you ever considered buying a rug from Ruggable?
Laura: They are everywhere. Everywhere.
Emily: If they actually work, I want one.
Laura: I know. If anyone's tried those, you tell us because they say you can wash them, and they do look amazing.
Emily: This is a little bit more serious: in the last year, have you thought more about race or politics or vaccines? If you have done any of those things, you have absolutely been influenced by mom influencer culture.
Laura: I think the thing is—we may not be following the one-million-follower-count influencer, but a lot of us are following people with 3000, 10,000—even four or 500, whatever it might be—but those things are trickling down. I think, in this day and age—this is something Emily and I have been talking about for quite a while now: a lot about what influencers are and what effect they're having on culture and, in specific, mom culture.
It feels like this industry isn't going away and it's something that we need to learn how to swim in the water. We need to learn how to think critically about it, because I think if we're not careful, it can feel like, "If I just look like her and I be like her and I do like her, and I buy all the things she tells me to buy, then I'll be happy like her. I'll be successful like her. I'll be beautiful like her. I'll be good at motherhood like her, and I won't feel the guilt anymore." That's what we want to talk about today a little bit—how to swim in the water of mom culture.
Emily: Let's think back to the quiz we did at the beginning because when we were saying, "Hey, does anybody in here feel guilty? Does anybody in here feel tired?"—we were all raising our hands. We want a little bit to make that connection to this mom influencer culture and say maybe there's something there. We're going to talk a little bit about the good things that mom influencer culture may be bringing into our lives. One of those things is just—at its best, we think there could be a Titus 2 experience on there, where I know I have learned from other godly, wise women online.
Laura: Certainly, this is something where we were talking about Risen Motherhood hopes to emulate at some level. Of course, it can't be the same thing. It's not the same as flesh-and-blood discipleship, but there are a lot of really wonderful women on there doing great work for the gospel.
Emily: Showing how to memorize Scripture with your kids—
Laura: How to have family devotions, and, I don't know, just all sorts of teaching you biblical theology or teaching you how they fit their quiet time in or what their thoughts are about things. There is certainly an element of: we can grow as a Christian by being edified by what other women are putting out there.
Emily: Sure. We are also talking about the common grace of, at the end of the day, we all need new recipes for what we're going to make for dinner. We do need bedding on our beds. Our kids do need pacifiers or swaddles or whatever those things are.
Laura: They have to show us how to do the taco move on the swaddle. You have to learn that as a new mom! Get those arms in there.
Emily: There's some things that are really helpful—if you find somebody that goes on IGTV and they do a review of multiple products. That stuff is actually really, really, helpful.
Laura: It's like this modern way that women would have helped each other out, like, at the town square.
Emily: Yes, swapped tips.
Laura: Yes, totally. Another one is just inspiring us to be amazed by what other moms can do—like a good kind of comparison—and what we mean by that is just saying, "Wow, this woman is incredibly gifted, and I can learn from her. I can watch her do art or I can watch her as she makes this beautiful bread." We have a lot of friends who just do beautiful things and we can appreciate and admire God's good gifts in other moms and say, "I'm glad I'm gifted my ways. I'm really glad they're gifted their ways."
Also, I think that there are times where I have been so inspired by the generosity in people's good hearts, the common grace in people where they do good things. You see people where there's, like, these good memes or funny, little things that people will share.
Emily: Oh, the memes in the last year have been really good.
Laura: Humanity is hilarious. There's some hope that can be on social media that people can share, and we want to recognize that.
Emily: Another thing that Laura and I have personally experienced is the beauty of finding some community online, maybe for something significant or special or unique that you're going through. There's someone, perhaps not in your real life, that's experienced that that you can talk to. Maybe it's miscarriage, maybe it's a long season of infertility or having a child with special needs. All those different things—man, what a gift that we can go online and hear somebody share their story and then be able to DM them or connect with them and realize that we're not alone.
Laura: Now that we've talked about some of the good things, we're going to talk about some of the bad things to be aware of. This, we admit, is really looking at things at its worst or with the most uncharitable lens, and everything can be viewed two ways. We want to recognize that, but I think first, when we're thinking about that authentic, relatable mom that we're following—I don't know if you have ever been flipping through reels and you see a mom who's, like—there's something super relatable that they're going to talk about. Something like, they got to start making dinner for their kids and they've been laying down and they're going to make dinner for their kids.
Then the next thing—they're like a rage monster or something, or they're passed out on the couch. It's supposed to be funny, but you're like, "Ooh. Oh my goodness." It's normalizing sin, or it's normalizing a bad attitude or hopelessness in motherhood. What's meant to make us laugh and feel identified with suddenly becomes like, I don't know—maybe you can laugh at one or two and then keep going, and you realize, this isn't so fun anymore.
Emily: I think on the flip side of that is the perfect mom image we were talking about, where they're lined up in front of the garage door and they're all matching. Even if their messages and their captions aren't explicitly saying "Hey, you need to do this. Hey, you need to be like me," what's implied is: I do. There's something wrong about me because I can't get my kids to line up like that. I can't get my kid out of their costume to go to the grocery store. I don't know.
Laura: Costumes forever at grocery stores. Just let it go. There are bigger battles in life. [Laughter]
Emily: What it does is it makes us think that maybe the answer to my hopelessness, again, is to purchase her life and to try to be more like that. Or maybe, to be relevant, I actually need to start my own account, and I need to start posting things like that. It can have that reverse effect.
Laura: Another one is it can cause confusion of what it means to be a Christian mom. A lot of moms that we see online might have Jesus in their bio, or they might talk about Christian things. I think we naturally gravitate—we're like, oh, she's a Christian. We always want to claim them. There is an element where sometimes they also have other things that they're promoting. This is probably, again—
Emily: —Yes, they're just like living out their life. It's their niche, it's their passion.
Laura: There's this extra—it's like Jesus plus. Jesus plus homesteading, Jesus plus chicken coops, Jesus plus politics, Jesus plus therapy, whatever it is—tacos, I don't know—but you feel like, to be a good Christian mom, I've got to be a believer and then I've also got to have this pet side project hobby. This thing that I vote for, this way that I live my life.
Emily: Her thing should be my thing.
Laura: Or just being careful about where you get your theology from. We're going to talk to this a little bit, but just this idea that, if you're listening to somebody who you've been following for a year, for three minutes a day, think about how much that can actually affect you. If you're listening to her more than your pastor of 10 years, there's a question there of where you're getting theology.
Emily: Another thing we've seen is—again, looking at it from a more critical eye—is a lot of us raising our hands when we're feeling guilty and tired. That can be a moment when somebody who's selling a product can capitalize on that moment. Somebody who has a hot take or a harsh word that confirms what you're feeling in that moment. They may leverage that feeling that you have because they know you're going to share that.
Actually, what that does is it elevates their platform. It allows them to get more followers, and they know that if they post that thing that resonates with you when you're in that tired, hopeless moment that they're actually going to grow. We have to be careful that we're not signing up for something in a moment when somebody is actually maybe preying on us and capitalizing on that.
Laura: Yeah, Em and I have said before, "We'll buy anything to make motherhood easier," but that can be a very real feeling that, if we're told that, we might in a weak moment capitalize on. The last one is just this idea that there are very real connections, and there are studies being published now—because social media has been around finally long enough for us to know that it can cause anxiety. It can cause depression. It can cause mental illnesses.
Being on the apps more and more and engaging with these influencers, especially when we're comparing ourselves—there are studies being done where the comparison affects the ways women mother and the way they see their motherhood. Even secular culture is seeing the same things that we're seeing as believers.
Emily: All right. We've looked at that. We're all feeling down, weighed down, right now, but we want to, of course, go back to the Bible. We want to go back to the Word of God. I had a chance to catch Mary's session last night, just listening to her talk about where we get wisdom from. How are we going to be steadfast in the time that we live in? How are we going to endure to the end?
We're going to go back to the Word of God and see what he says. As we're looking at creation, I think one of the things we notice is we were created to be influenced and we were created to influence others. Influence in and of itself is not a bad thing. It's actually wired into us. If we think about Genesis 1 and 2, mankind was created in the image of God to behold him and to become like him.
There's that vertical influence going on. God should be completely and totally and wholly and utterly in charge of everything we do. We should bring everything in line to what he says. Then there's the horizontal influence. We were designed to influence others. I love seeing this throughout all of Scripture. We see in wisdom literature wise people spending time with wise—spending time with wise people makes you more wise. Older women to younger women, parents to children. I love the picture of believers stirring one another up to love and good works because we encourage one another. We influence one another to follow Christ. It's not a bad thing.
Laura: Yes, but your sin is. Genesis 3, one chapter further—it's interesting to think about Eve totally and wholly being influenced by God. Then one new influence enters the garden and she's like, "Yes, going to listen to you. And I'm going to tell my man about it." She influences, then, Adam, and that sets a pattern for all of creation.
I think when we think about—especially our unregenerate selves—when we're looking for influence, we actually are totally rejecting God's influence. We're saying, well, culture tells us, "Hey, you be influential to yourself. You live your truth. You unleash the inner goddess. You be you. Aspire to what you want to be and influence yourselves toward whatever it is you want," which can be really unclear.
Emily: Yes, like manifest your—I don't know all the words, but there's some about manifesting.
Laura: Yeah, that is a keyword. But then what's funny about us is, because we're so easily influenced, we're still looking for someone to tell us what to do. Some of us show it more than others based on personality types, but we're really willing to follow anybody who's offering anything. Very quickly, "let me influence myself" breaks down. As even somebody who follows Jesus, what happens to us is we forget that, or we start looking for what's easy. We don't really like what the answer is for what it looks like to follow Jesus in the long term and be influenced by him, which is the slow plod of daily obedience.
It's being faithful in the everyday. It's slowly growing in him. We're looking for something quick, something to make us feel better right now, something to help us feel valuable right now or to get rid of those feelings. That's where we need the hope of the gospel.
Emily: Yes, of course, the redemption part: Jesus redeems influence. He allows us to then influence others for the kingdom, which is really, really great. What we love looking about and thinking about is what kind of influencer Jesus really was. He's the most influential man of all time and everybody knows his name.
Laura: Think about that. You say, "Jesus"—everyone will know his name, know where to find his story. They probably know a little bit about his life. He's the most influential man, whether you think he's Lord or not.
Emily: A lot of people know him, but yet he didn't follow the traditional rules of becoming an influencer. We actually know from Isaiah that he wasn't particularly attractive for a human. When there were crowds around him, there were times when he rejected fame, where he turned away from the crowds. We know that there were many situations where he was the one who should have been served, and instead, what did he do? He flipped, and he served. He was humble and quiet. He only came into public ministry when his Father said that it was time.
There were also just so many ways he didn't show off his power and his might. He did only the things that the Father asked him to do. There were some things—miracles he didn't complete or some towns that he left when the Lord said it was time.
We also know that he lived counter-cultural to numerical formulas. Instead of coming up the ranks and networking, who did Jesus decide to invest in? He gets twelve people around him that the world would not have said were impressive or helpful for his career, his ministry career. Then it's really interesting to see him even—who does he spend time with? Who does he go to? People with disabilities, people who are poor, people needing to be healed, sinners. These people were not helping him. In fact, they were probably—
Laura: —hurting his image.
Emily: They were hurting his reputation and it's just really, really incredible. Then what does he do at the pinnacle of his influence? He dies. That is just so, so counter. As we were thinking about the redemption, going back to, again, that vertical piece and that horizontal piece, Jesus is the image of the invisible God. He is perfectly influenced by the Father, and he redeems that horizontal influence.
I just love looking at his example—Philippians 2: "Though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself by taking the form of a servant." We know he goes all the way to the cross. Romans 5:7 talks about "One will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even die, but God shows his love for us in that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." We see redeemed influence is service. It's death. It's obedience. That's really counter.
Laura: We were talking a little bit about Zacchaeus, and a lot of us probably sing this song to our kiddos and think of this as maybe a kid's story, but it's actually a really beautiful picture of what it looks like when your life has been transformed by Jesus Christ and you have been influenced by him.
If you're not familiar with Zacchaeus, he is a man who was a wealthy tax collector and he had been cheating people out of their money, been upcharging them a ton of money. He had not been honest with them, and people really didn't like him. He was not a cool dude. Jesus comes and—I feel like I'm going to need to start singing the song. He comes and he says, "Zacchaeus, you come down"—oh man.
Emily: —"For I'm going to your house today." [Laughter]
Laura: He goes to his house and Jesus transforms his life. Zacchaeus says, "Lord, I'm going to give back everything that I have taken from the poor. I'm going to give back four times." That is a life that has changed from an influence of greed and selfishness and all about himself to a life that has been completely influenced by Jesus. It is amazing what can happen when our desires and our life are put under the influence of the right person. The rightful King has our allegiance and that transforms everything—even the way that we deal with mom culture.
Emily: Just tying this back and giving that fly-over of what the gospel really says about influence and its purpose in our lives—we were thinking, like, once Jesus becomes that primary, main influence in our lives, once we've given him everything, everything else can take its proper place. The verse that always comes to mind for me is 2 Corinthians 6:12, where Paul's talking about, "All things are lawful for me, but not everything is helpful," and that he doesn't want to be dominated by anything or enslaved by anything.
I think, in that mindset, we can follow people online and learn how to raise chickens if we want to or learn how to bake bread or find some jeans off of social media, but it doesn't have to dominate us. It doesn't have to be something that we're enslaved to, and there's a real big difference there.
Laura: It reminds me of Tim Keller's book, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness. We just did this as the R|M read a couple of months ago, and he says, "It's not thinking less of yourself—it's thinking of yourself less." Perhaps, when we apply that to influencers, it's not thinking less of influencers—it's thinking of influencers less. They tend to dominate our conversations. They’ve become our new celebrity. We were talking about Jennifer Aniston and J.LO and Princess Di and all the people that maybe our moms looked up to.
Now we're talking about the other influencers that we follow, but I think it's thinking of them less and letting them have less influence on our lives. Often—you guys, if you're a longtime listener to Risen Motherhood you might've heard this analogy before—but I think often of social media as a shopping mall and—
Emily: Laura, what is a shopping mall? [Laughter]
Laura: It's been years since some of you guys have gone. Oh my goodness.
Emily: Especially with COVID.
Laura: Well, that was the thing—I entered this shopping mall, which I had not been in one for many, many years. I remember walking out of it and just feeling really gross and feeling like, oh, all of a sudden, I want all this stuff. I didn't realize there were so many cool pairs of shoes on the market. I didn't realize lotion came in these cool bottles and now I need it. What was funny is that—Emily says to me sometimes—like when we're talking on social media, she's like, "Gird your loins to get onto social media." It's always hilarious. I promise. What's funny is that when we go into a mall, we should not be surprised if we want to buy things.
I was shocked. It was funny because you think about a mall and it's dark. There are no windows. You can't tell what time of day it is. There's a food court, so you can survive all day in there. There's entertainment if you need a break. There are signs everywhere telling you these are the sales; these are the deals that you can get. There's a salesperson saying, "Do you need anything? Can I help you?" It's totally okay to go to a shopping mall. We wouldn't say it's wrong to go to a shopping mall, but it's on us if we're like, "why do I feel so much greed right now? Why do I feel so much jealousy or covetousness, or suddenly I want all these things? I'm so shocked by it." It's like, well, you went to the mall, like, duh.
I think there's an element of that when we're on social media and we start to feel those feelings. So many of us have treated it in a way that we're like, "Oh my goodness. I feel some of these feelings of dissension in my heart." We need to be prepared for that. That's what it means to get on social media—that we are at risk for war every time we get on there.
Emily: We've also talked a little bit about the analogy of—social media is a great tool, but it's not a toy. I think sometimes, because it's just available at our fingertips and it feels so benign and it's so glowy and pretty—
Laura: —It's this little Teddy bear.
Emily: Yes, and it gives you the dopamine hit. You think it's just totally neutral, but it's really not. It really can be hurtful if we're not using it correctly, a little bit like a knife in the kitchen. It's great for slicing those veggies, but you don't want to be flinging it around. That's not safe. You need to know how to use it and be aware that you have something sharp. It’s going to cut you if you're not careful. Just on a practical note, when we're talking about mom influencers and wanting to be under the right influence and then using our influence well, it might be wise for us to take breaks from social media regularly. It might be wise for us to set limits on our phones so that we don't always have free access to it.
I've heard of some people putting their social media apps in a little group that's harder to get to or deleting their apps for the weekend. There are all kinds of tips you can do. Sometimes that can help us step back a little bit and say, "Wait, how are these things influencing me? Am I really turning to the right influences?" Because, I think one of the things I've noticed is that the more time we spend on social media, sometimes it can dull our affections for something else.
We realize we're sitting in church on Sunday and it's like, "Why is the sermon starting to sound boring to me? Why is my Bible reading just kind of like 'meh'?" Well, actually, our brains get rewired when we are spending a ton of time on a screen. We need to break that cycle and retrain our appetite to long for spiritual things.
Laura: Yes. It brings me back to my mall analogy—this idea that I didn't realize what those feelings were until I got out of the mall and into the sunshine. I was talking with my husband about it, and I was like, "I just feel so angsty right now." I wasn't recognizing where those feelings were coming from until I got out of there and could breathe some fresh air. I tell you—I think one of the best things that I consistently try to do for my social media intake is to not be afraid to hit unfollow and not be afraid to hit mute.
I think we feel this FOMO, like—"I won't know what's going on" or "This is where I get my primary news" or "This is where I find out what's going on in culture. This is where I keep up with my favorite mom influencer, and I won't know what's going on in her life." They’ll still be there when you get back.
I followed a whole bunch of interior designers when I was working on my house. I love following designers. I love interior design. There were just so many, and I realized I had built my house and I was like, man, I want to build again because I saw all these new things. I just got done with my house and I wanted to build again. I realized "I got to unfollow these people," but I was afraid to unfollow them because I thought, "Well, then I won't know how to find them again. Then whenever I do someday get to build, like—how will I ever know?"
It's like—okay, if the Lord wants you to find them, he'll help you find them by the power of the Spirit. It will be okay. I think, though, that it's okay for us to just say, "I'm going to be ruthless with my unfollows and my mutes." If someone is not serving you—even if that is Risen Motherhood in a season—it is really okay to say "I'm out."
Emily: Always, I think, as we're turning away from something, it's helpful to know: what should we be turning to? What should we be spending our time doing? I know that this is a pat answer—this is the answer we always give, but it is the answer. We've got to be spending time in the Word. We need to be spending time in prayer. Some of us, I think—especially in the last year with everything with the pandemic— potentially are listening more closely to somebody's theology on social media, or we'll change an opinion on a dime, even though maybe our pastor for, again, the last 10 or 20 years, is saying something different. Why is that?
I think we have to ask ourselves that question and say, "Are we really developing that local church community and investing in those relationships, spending time in our real lives?" We're not digital people, God didn't wire us into the matrix or whatever. He made us with bodies that were meant to go outside and play with our kids and all of those different things. It's important that we spend—not just stop social media—but spend some time on the right things.
Laura: Yes. If you think of your life like a little food pyramid, social media should be like a donut.
Emily: I do like donuts.
Laura: We like donuts. Yeah. We got to have donuts, but it should be tiny—like small. [Laughter] What's next?
Emily: All of this—so we're moms living in a digital age. We're under the influence. This mom culture is not going away, but what does that mean about our daily faithfulness, Laura?
Laura: Ooh. I can answer this.
Emily: I'm lobbing it back to you.
Laura: Well, I think it's funny because we all have influence. We like to say, "influencer" has become this—is it a noun? It's become this thing, this type of person. I think that's true and it's very real, but also, we all have influence in our lives. Like we talked about throughout the gospel, we're all called to have influence. We need to be thinking and cultivating our own influence and considering, "How is that affecting other people? What am I drawing them to? What am I showing them? Am I pointing them to mom influencer culture and showing them that that's where their hope is? Is that what my conversations revolve around, or am I pointing my friends to Jesus?" We can ask ourselves that question of: "What does our own faithfulness and influence look like?"
Emily: One of the things Laura and I heard recently that just really, really ministered to us was this idea of—you don't know what God is going to bless. You don't know what kind of influence or what conversation it's going to be. I think we're going to get to heaven someday and it's going to be maybe the opposite of what we thought. There's going to be a lot of women and moms who have this incredible fruitfulness, and they did not have hundreds of thousands of followers online.
We need to be really, really careful as we're thinking about eternity. And even in our own lives. Laura and I, again—we're on social media, but I don't know if it's the thing that I wrote and posted on Risen Motherhood or the thing I recorded for the podcast or the thing I said at 7:00 AM to my child who was tired and frustrated. I don't get to decide that. The Lord does.
Both of those situations can be treated with faithfulness and given to the Lord. I think there's just a lot of hope in us being able to do what the Lord has placed in front of us that day to influence somebody who's maybe not going to help us network or they're not going to follow us online. They're not going to help share our posts, but we're still called to love them and serve them, and then we let the Lord determine how he's going to use that.
Laura: Amen. That was great. We just want to close with encouraging you guys to really consider your feed. Consider who those mom influencers are in your lives and consider the influence that you do have and how you're pointing people to Jesus. I love what you said, Em, because I think that's something you and I talk about all the time: it is an upside-down kingdom, and it's not going to be what we expect, I think.
Emily: Yes. Maybe it's not, "How can I be like the influencer?" but "How can I be faithful?"
Laura: That's good. That was good.
Emily: Thanks guys.
