TikTok’s mommy influencer meltdown

Hannah Hiatt amassed hundreds of thousands of TikTok followers with videos depicting the unglamorous struggles of motherhood - such as a workout constantly interrupted by fussy kids, or dirty diapers strewn about her Utah home. She’s one of many in the modern-day mommy blogger community, a lifestyle niche that evolved into a moneymaking juggernaut on social media and soared on TikTok.

But as the genre’s popularity exploded, so have viewers’ suspicions of professionally online parents. Hiatt’s relationship with her audience took a sharp turn late last year.

Alarmed viewers seized on a short video clip in which the nurse’s 2-year-old son blinks and shields his face as his father hands him a box of frozen mochi in a grocery store. Soon, other TikTokers were sharing compilations of what they believed to be the Hiatt family’s most egregious examples of child mistreatment: refusing to buy their son a $35 winter coat, or Hiatt’s husband, Braxton, flicking their son’s hand as he reached for a french fry. A “flinch test” trend swept the platform, as TikTokers waved their hands in their children’s faces to demonstrate what they believed was a more typical reflex.

Hiatt turned off comments. She took down videos. In November, she reassured her more than 500,000 followers that the father-son duo regularly play and jump-scare each other. “You can’t believe everything you see on social media,” she said in that video.

But her protests didn’t dissuade the internet sleuths, and, in December, the Ogden City Police Department confirmed reports that it had launched an investigation into the Hiatts with the state’s Division of Child and Family Services. The probe was closed after finding no criminal wrongdoing, The Washington Post learned this week, but Hiatt hasn’t posted videos of her kids since she became the latest mommy influencer to be accused of child mistreatment.

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The fate of TikTok in the United States is in limbo, with a potential ban of the app expected as soon as Sunday, but the appetite for parenting tell-alls long predates the platform. Mom bloggers such as Heather Armstrong and Jill Smokler built huge followings in the 2000s and early 2010s, sharing unvarnished parenting stories on their personal sites.

Some mommy bloggers made content creation their career as the world migrated to image-based social media platforms such as Instagram, posting picturesque family scenes and filling letter boards with inspirational quotes they would find on Pinterest. But more relatable, messier content creators have generally fared better than their glamorous counterparts on TikTok, where parent content exploded at the start of the pandemic.

Creators who have been targeted say the vitriol can be traumatizing for them and their families. Others argue that it’s important to report concerning behavior they notice online, citing cases such as Ruby Franke, an influencer whose abuse of her children was uncovered in part with the help of internet sleuths.

Christina Herring, a 33-year-old mother of four in Wetumpka, Alabama, who’s on TikTok as “mommyofthebeezzzz,” has drawn ire for freewheeling videos in which she often screeches and grunts, frenetically dances, and makes grotesque facial expressions. In other clips, she and her children play-fight and cover rooms with paint.

She told The Post that videos of her roughhousing with her children in their previous home’s rage room have angered adversaries so much that people have published her address on the internet, told her to kill herself and threatened to call child protective services on her to have her kids removed from her care.

Herring said her online persona is a more exaggerated version of herself, a comedic character she assumes while raising her kids to unapologetically express their emotions. She said what viewers don’t see is that, every night, her family eats together at the dinner table while they recount what happened that day.

“I know I’m a good mom. I have nothing to hide,” she said. “And I refuse to take what I do fully away from my children because other people have a say in it.”

Catherine Connors, a Los Angeles-based writer, media consultant and mom blogging pioneer through her site, Her Bad Mother, says that trolls and hate messages forced her to disable comments on her blog around 2010. She said that, even in the early days of the genre, when the stakes were low and there was less money on the line, creators like her were accused of exploiting their children for attention. Holding the title of “mommy blogger” was looked down upon, partially due to long-standing misogyny, as the women weren’t considered legitimate writers.

“It’s long been considered so taboo for women to talk about their private lives, to talk family in public,” she said. “… For me, this was part of what was radical about it - even liberatory.”

But the growth of social media and the creator economy invited more critics. Connors noted that a larger audience amplified financial opportunities for mom bloggers, but it made it more difficult to differentiate between videos from creators honestly portraying their flaws and those willing to neglect their kids for views.

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In extreme cases, public suspicion of parent influencers has been justified. The best-known example is Franke - a Utah mother of six who had more than 2 million subscribers on YouTube at the height of her popularity.

Some viewers had expressed alarm about Franke as early as 2020, concerned by stories she shared in her videos, including one where she refused to bring her then-6-year-old daughter’s lunch to school after she forgot it. The state’s child and family services agency investigated but couldn’t find evidence of abuse, according to Insider.

Then, in 2023, one of Franke’s sons escaped the home through a window and asked a neighbor for help, looking malnourished and wounded. Police arrested Franke, who pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse and was sentenced in February to between four and 30 years in prison. Her eldest daughter, Shari, said on Instagram after the arrest that her family had reported her mom to police and CPS for years, to no avail.

As for Hiatt, the initial reports of a police investigation appeared in news outlets and reverberated for weeks online, despite a lack of any update. A Utah DCFS spokesman declined to comment in December, citing the organization’s practice of not confirming or denying its involvement with specific families. “We did multiple interviews, we served multiple warrants and reviewed hours and hours of video. And at this time, there is no indication or … evidence of actual criminal” activity, Ogden police Lt. Jason Vanderwarf said to The Post on Wednesday.

Hiatt, who did not respond to multiple requests for comment, has kept mum about the controversy, but she returned to posting TikToks and YouTube vlogs this year, to positive reception - albeit without her children or husband.

Tara Clark, founder of the Instagram page and podcast Modern Mom Probs, said Hiatt undeniably resonated with parents but probably could have gotten her message across without the shock value of doing things such as videoing dirty diapers.

Mom creators must decide how much vulnerable storytelling they’re willing to do, and how much judgment they can stomach.

“Your accounts that you follow, whether it’s on TikTok or Instagram, that becomes your parenting village,” she said. “… It’s a slippery slope when people choose to document their lives and choose to broadcast their lives for public consumption.”