My social media algorithms knew I was pregnant before family, friends or my GP. Within 24-hours, they were transforming my feeds. On Instagram and TikTok, I would scroll through videos of women recording themselves as they took pregnancy tests, just as I had done. I “liked”, “saved”, and “shared” the content, feeding the machine, showing it that this is how it could hold my attention, compelling it to send me more. So it did. But it wasn’t long before the joy of those early videos started to transform into something dark.
The algorithm began to deliver content about the things you fear the most while pregnant: “storytimes” about miscarriages; people sharing what happened to them and, harrowingly, filming themselves as they received the news that their baby had no heartbeat. Next came videos about birth disfigurements, those found by medical professionals early on, and those that were missed until the baby’s birth.
When I talk about this experience with others who were pregnant at the same time as me, I am met with knowing nods and stories that match my own. I hear about how they were also served up personalised doses of fear, and how the algorithms evolved to target the things specific to them. Our experiences feel like a radicalisation, as normal worries were driven to new heights by a barrage of content that became more and more extreme. This is pregnancy and motherhood in 2025.
For Dr Christina Inge, a researcher at Harvard University specialising in the ethics of technology, these experiences are not surprising. “Social media platforms are optimised for engagement, and fear is one of the most powerful drivers of attention,” she says. “
so….bad stories follow bad stories about experiences with social media. Why do we still feel we need it?