The post has since been taken down.
A blogger and Instagram-famous mom has come under fire for comments she made about her 6-year-old son receiving the least likes out of all of her children, but she is now defending her actions.
Katie Bower, a mother of five, faced online criticism for a since-deleted post she put up on Instagram on her son’s birthday. While she praised his personality, she also wrote about how “his photos never got as many likes" as her other children's.
"From a statistical point of view, he wasn’t as popular with everyone out there,” Bower said. "Maybe part of that was the pictures just never hit the algorithm right. Part might be because he was ‘the baby’ for a very short amount of time before his siblings were born. I say all that because I want to believe that it wasn’t him … that it was on me. My insufficiency caused this statistical deficit because obviously my Munch should get ALL the love and squinty eyes are totally adorable.”
She continued by saying that she knows he will one day “see the numbers and have to learn that his value is not in online approval.”
"So can we do this right? Because I truly KNOW that my Munch deserves all the likes … whether or not a stranger gives it to them. And on his sixth birthday — I am thankful I know that … that no matter what other people think of me or my kids or my marriage or my house of my life or my everything… that they are 10000000x better in real life than any tiny little picture could hold,” she wrote.
Many criticized the Georgia mom on social media for her post.
“First of all, no, one day he will not ‘need to see the numbers’— this person is horrible,” one Twitter user wrote.
Another user wrote, “Katie Bower is an endless well of social media neediness. This is not at all surprising. Her entire life revolves around generating as much internet attention as she can, so it's no wonder that she expects her children will also see their worth in terms of 'likes.'"
The mom, however, said she stands by her reasoning for writing the post in the first place.
“I decided to talk about it because I learned a valuable lesson ... that our value doesn't depend on someone else seeing our worth. Numbers are public already. Everyone can see the likes and comments,” Bower told InsideEdition.com. “And as a parent, those numbers mean absolutely nothing. Nothing can change the fact that ALL children are special and unique and deserve love, but unfortunately from a business side, we hear, 'Keep posting the content that brings in the most engagement.'"
The mom said she felt like her message was “misconstrued by people,” but added she could possibly have said what she meant more clearly.
Bower said she took the post down because the comments were “obscene and did not reflect the type of dialogue we support.”
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