For a long time, I wanted to believe that social media could simply be a cheerful little corner of the internet.

A place to share photographs of our family. A favorite recipe. A funny story from the day. A birthday. The first day of school. A holiday. A particularly beautiful sunset.

And perhaps, for many people, it still is.

But over time, I began to see another side of it.

A side that made me increasingly uncomfortable, not only as a woman, but especially as a mother.

Because somewhere along the way, I began to wonder why so many of us are told to simply leave when someone is harassing us.

Why is the burden so often placed on the person being targeted?

Why are women and children told to block, ignore, disappear, hide, make their accounts private, stop posting photographs, change their names, or leave entirely? We purchase home security systems, motion detector lights, pepper spray, and tools for violence protection, in the event that the harassment escalates, so that we can keep our children safe and sleep soundly at night.

When Blocking Isn’t Enough

We often hear the same advice when someone is being harassed online.

Just block them.

And certainly, blocking can be useful, although it does not help with stalking behaviors in the real world. And online harassment is often an extension of stalking and harassment from someone you or your children have encountered in real life. Privacy settings can be useful. Leaving a platform can sometimes be the safest choice.

But there is a difference between someone being mildly annoying and someone repeatedly creating new accounts, making fake accounts with your maiden name change to “Nothin” to bully you, impersonating another person, posting degrading and dehumanizing content directed at you and your children, new fake accounts requesting you with posts about your child’s sensitive personal information, unsettling comments, and using social media as one more way to continue unwanted behavior.

A person can be blocked.

And then another account appears.

And another.

And another.

The people being targeted become concerned for their children’s safety and exhausted from reporting accounts, saving texts and other screenshots, changing settings, and wondering whether the next strange message or notification will bring something else.

At some point, the question becomes:

Why is the person being harassed doing all of the work?

What Happens When the Reports Go Nowhere?

This is something I feel very strongly about because my own family went through a difficult experience with online harassment.

There were fake accounts, texts and calls, someone using my email to change my social media passwords, and attempts to tamper with other accounts.

There were dehumanizing and degrading posts.

There were strange messages and inappropriate links.

There were accounts that appeared to contain personal references to our children that made the situation feel especially unsettling. There were hurtful comments involving people connected to our family, and even false and damaging accusations. Friends from our church were targeted by these fake accounts to access our children’s photos and information, I can only assume.

I reported what I could.

Again and again.

And yet, from my perspective, it often felt as though the response was simply… nothing.

The fake accounts remained.

The posts remained.

And eventually, instead of the people behind the behavior being removed from the space, we were the ones who left.

My children and I stepped away from social media because it no longer felt like a place where we could comfortably share our lives.

And that has stayed with and concerned me. Because I do not think our experience is unusual.

When Online Spaces Stop Feeling Like Community

Social media was supposed to help us connect.

And sometimes it does.

There are still wonderful people online. There are artists sharing their work, grandparents keeping up with grandchildren, friends encouraging one another, parents sharing helpful ideas, and communities gathering around things they love.

I do not want to pretend that there is nothing good there.

But I also think we need to be honest about what happens when online spaces become places where cruelty is tolerated.

When fake accounts can be used to mock someone.

When degrading or sexual content can be sent to people who did not ask for it.

When bullying is allowed to continue.

When someone can repeatedly create new accounts after being blocked.

When personal information or family details can be used to frighten, humiliate, or intimidate someone.

And when the response from the people running these enormous platforms seems inadequate, the message can begin to feel painfully clear:

Protect.

Hide.

Leave.

And perhaps that is sometimes exactly what we should do.

But shouldn’t we also be asking why leaving is so often the only solution offered to the people being harmed?

Women and Children Deserve Better

I am especially concerned about women and children.

Children are growing up in a world where online life is not some separate little corner of existence. It is increasingly woven into friendships, entertainment, education, communication, and everyday life.

And women have been told for generations, in one form or another, to be careful.

Don’t go there.

Don’t wear that.

Don’t walk alone.

Don’t respond.

Don’t make eye contact.

Don’t post that photograph or video.

Don’t use a softening filter on a photo of you and your children to make the Christmas scenery in the back ground look more charming, because that might mean something that you don’t understand to someone else.

Don’t share your location.

Don’t use your real name.

Don’t make your account public.

And now, increasingly:

Don’t be online at all if you are not a ‘free speech absolutist’ and ‘cannot handle’ what might happen there.

But I do not think women and children should have to disappear from every space where some people refuse to behave appropriately.

The answer cannot always be that the people being harassed must leave while those doing the harassing simply create another account and continue harassing other women and children.

We should expect more.

We Need Platforms That Take Safety Seriously

I am not a technology expert, and I do not pretend to know exactly how every problem should be solved.

But I do know that companies capable of building extraordinarily complicated technology should be able to devote serious energy to protecting people from repeated harassment, impersonation, stalking behavior, sexual harassment, and targeted bullying.

Especially when children and families are involved.

Reporting systems should not feel like a bottomless pit where harmful content disappears from your screen while remaining someone else’s problem.

Repeatedly creating accounts to continue harassing someone should be taken seriously.

Impersonation should be taken seriously.

Targeted bullying should be taken seriously.

And people should not have to gather mountains of evidence, spend hours filing reports, and repeatedly expose themselves to harmful content just to have the opportunity to ask for basic protection.

Safety should not be an afterthought.

It should be part of the design.

Leaving Was Not a Failure

For a while, I struggled with the idea that we had been pushed out of a space that we had every right to enjoy.

I wondered whether leaving meant the people who had behaved badly had somehow won.

But I do not see it that way anymore.

Sometimes leaving is not giving up.

Sometimes leaving is choosing peace.

Sometimes it is protecting your children.

Sometimes it is recognizing that a particular space is asking too much of you and doing nothing to protect families, mothers, and children.

There is nothing weak about deciding that you do not want to spend your life monitoring comments, reporting fake accounts, wondering who is watching, or worrying about what might appear next.

Our lives are happening right here.

At the kitchen table.

On walks around the neighborhood.

At birthday parties and school events.

Over family dinners and cups of coffee.

In conversations with people who know us and love us.

There is a great big, beautiful world beyond the screen.

And sometimes stepping away from an online space gives us more room to enjoy the life that was there all along.

A Hope for Something Better

Still, I do not think we should simply shrug our shoulders and accept the idea that online spaces will always belong to the loudest, cruelest, or most predatory people.

I hope we begin expecting more from the companies that build these spaces.

I hope they listen more carefully when women report harassment.

I hope they take repeated impersonation and targeted bullying seriously.

I hope protecting children becomes more important than ‘increasing engagement’.

I hope safety is treated as something worth investing in.

And I hope women and children never feel that the only way to be safe and left alone by predators is to disappear.

Until then, I think it is perfectly reasonable to be thoughtful about what we share, who we share it with, and whether a particular platform is adding something good to our lives.

We are allowed to choose peace.

We are allowed to keep parts of our lives private.

We are allowed to decide that not everyone needs access to our family photographs, our children, our stories, or our everyday moments.

And we are also allowed to say that we want something better.

Because the internet does not have to be a place where the people who behave badly are given endless opportunities while everyone else is told to block, hide, and leave.

Women deserve better.

Children deserve better.

Families deserve better.

And perhaps one day, the safest people online will not be the ones who have learned how to disappear.

Perhaps the people who create these spaces will finally decide that protecting the people who use them matters just as much as keeping them there.

Until then, I will continue to believe that there is something wonderfully freeing about choosing where our attention goes.

Sometimes joy looks like sharing a photograph.

And sometimes, joy looks like putting the phone down, deleting the app, and returning to the beautiful, ordinary life happening right in front of us!