SOCIAL media is breeding a new kind of scourge: parents who overshare online

Here's how my very last day on Facebook went down. I sat down with my breakfast, pulled up Facebook on my phone and was greeted by a photo from inside a hospital birthing suite.

"I'm in love! Little Sienna, 3.2kg, 54cm!" read the caption below a photo of my friend, her two-minute-old baby in her arms. So far, so sweet - except my friend hadn't, um, cleaned up before the shots were snapped. From the waist down, it looked like there'd been a murder.

I swallowed and clicked Cancel Account. The parents wrecked it. I am a parent, but still: the parents wrecked Facebook.

Nothing, it seems, is off-limits to social-media breeders. They've never met a poop they wouldn't post, or a milestone they won't mark with a ‘humble-brag' status ("ZOMG! Should Braydon have such amazing head control? He's only 6wks!!!!"). Snot, vomit, childbirth - it's all fodder for FaceyB.

New York-based writer Blair Koenig (still on Facebook, but only just) noticed the same thing four years ago, prompting her to start the blog Shut the F*ck Up, Parents to showcase the very worst in online overshare.

"I came up with the idea," explains Koenig, on the phone from Brooklyn, "after seeing more and more information in my feed about the very small details of kids' lives, from nappy changes to nap times. One day a friend posted more than 10 updates about her child's fever going up and down. I sympathised, but at the same time I thought, ‘Is it just me or are parents sharing more than they used to?'"

It wasn't just her. On day two of her blog, submissions - mostly screen grabs of status updates - poured in from all over the world: "The more submissions I got, the more patterns I'd notice in parental overshare. But I had no way of talking about these trends," says Koenig.

What, for example, do you call a mother who responds to a non-child-related status - "I got a promotion today!" - with a sneaky circle-back to her own kid? "Congrats! Bella's going to be a doctor when she grows up! So gifted."

Now Koenig (who, this year, turned the blog into a book, STFU, Parents: The Jaw-Dropping, Self-Indulgent, and Occasionally Rage-Inducing World of Parent Overshare) knows exactly: ‘mommyjacking'.

"Mommyjackers are everywhere!" she laughs. "Same with ‘sanctimommies', the mothers who think their parenting style is the only way."

See also ‘documoms' (aka the ‘mommarazzi'), who upload entire albums for each knee scrape or potty trip. Or the ‘woe is mom' - who jumps on anyone child-free for daring to complain about being tired after, say, moving house.

"Try doing it 9mths pregnant + a 3yo. Then talk to me about tired. LOLz!!"

Thousands of submissions later, Koenig is still amazed by what parents will post.

"I see social media as one big public space that we share. It's not somewhere to record everything that comes out of your kid's body. Even if you want to commiserate with a friend, do you need to commiserate with 500 friends?"

Koenig, who hopes to have babies herself one day, isn't anti-kid as her haters often claim. But she's certainly part of a backlash against the stranglehold parents seem to have on social, and even regular, media.

Comic Jen Kirkman, a writer and regular on Chelsea Handler's talk show, works the same vibe in her book I Can Barely Take Care of Myself: Tales from a Happy Life Without Kids.

"Parenthood can be very rewarding," Kirkman wrote, "but let's face it: so are margaritas at the adults-only pool."

That's not to say there's no audience for well-crafted kid material. Case in point, the Reasons My Son is Crying blog that went insanely viral last month, picking up links everywhere from BuzzFeed to Perez Hilton.

The blog is a collection of low-quality pictures of kids crying because someone sneezed or cut an apple wrong. Simple captions mean the material isn't overshare, just funny.

Which shows, Koenig agrees, "you can really talk about anything - even gross things - if you're subtle or you make a joke. Just make it so nobody dreads your updates."

Via both book and blog, she hopes to see a move away from current levels of TMI: "Maybe people would reconsider that behaviour. You don't want your grown-up kid not being able to run for office because you posted a picture of him pooping years back."

Until the switch-back happens, there's always unbaby.me, a software add-on for Google Chrome that turns friends' baby photos in your Facebook feed into pictures of cute pugs, cars or bacon. Or, failing that, Cancel Account.

FOLLOW MEG ON TWITTER @MEG_MASON



The five kinds of status updates we never want to read again

Totes abbreviated: ZOMG! LMAO, my 2yo is soooo LOLz. TMI! IKR???

Bodily function TMI: Jack just pooped right up the back of his onesie. Ugh! All over me.

Pointless chain: Copy and paste this if you are a proud mamma who will always put their children first and never last!!

Passive aggressive: I'm just not the kind of mother who wants to dump my kid in day care. No judgement. But each to their own.

Full aggressive: When I see my baby sweetly wave at an adult… and the adult does NOT wave back, I want to cut that adult's hand off so they would have reason to ignore my child.

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