Today my daughter graduates from Johns Hopkins. I’m a brag hag mom so it’s a big deal for me, but she was also the first kid in our county on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to get accepted at the #6 university in the U.S., alma mater of the publisher of this website, who also edited the newspaper there. She’s graduating with honors— they don’t do “laude” anything because please, they’re all brilliant, they don’t need Latin titles, you either get over a 3.5 and therefore honors, or not.
Photos from graduation today will eventually make it to Facebook, but the place I’ll share the happy event first is on my Instagram story (which also gets shared to Facebook by default). As a blogger for nearly 25 years, I’ve been through the social media route across the years—from Tom and MySpace to Vines to Threads and Reels and TikTok and so many platforms in-between that have come and gone. I’ve always tried to be an early adopter, rolling my eyes as I download yet another app to lock down a username. I was proud when I got the simple “marymac” on Twitter, and I’ve had different opinions about the various platforms over the years.
I’ve never been the mom that restricted social media from my kids’ lives, preferring instead to teach moderation and self-regulation. I didn’t always get it right, but they turned out to be four pretty cool adults. As a journalist, I’m undoubtedly more plugged in to social media than most of their friends’ moms, but never got into Snapchat so they didn’t have to worry about getting embarrassed by mom. I taught a workshop on “Mom Don’t Blog About Me” years ago at the national blogging conference and I’ve tried to be respectful of my kids’ privacy and keep the “cringe” moments to a minimum for them.
But of all the platforms, Instagram stories are my favorite genre. In a Goldilocks approach to social media, where Twitter is too Trumpy, Facebook is too Boomer, TikTok has too many ads and also weird there for awhile, Bluesky is great but only for politics, I always come back to Instagram. The main feed can be slow but I love finding fun stuff on the “explore” page and sharing to story with maybe a fun song or gif animation, background or funny caption. Instagram Stories are just a fun, silly, snackable content format that aligns with my scatterbrained way of sharing things.
Curating adorable, hilarious, motivational, poignant and sometimes political stories on IG is my journalistic medium—for no pay. But I’ll say this: that venue or genre subcategory is where I have the most engagement on social media. It’s not why I’m doing it, but I have lots of people responding with reactions—they seem to enjoy it and have fun. And I’m glad! Regular posts are stagnant and boring (reels are the exception) but stories are alive and generally have just the 24-hour shelf life. I also collect stories into “story highlights” on my IG front page—collections of article links, sunset or miniatures photos, etc.— if they’re ones that need to hang around for more than 24 hours.