Even Instamums need to log off now and then

Last month, this newspaper reported that Clemmie Hooper, an Instamum with almost half a million followers, had left the social media site because of trolling, from other mums. This week Hooper, who goes by the name Mother of Daughters on the platform, returned and explained her brief absence. It had little to do with trolling, she said, and a lot to do with the overwhelming nature of sudden social media fame.

Hooper is a friend of mine, so I declare an interest here. She is a midwife whose blog about work and motherhood became hugely popular. But then came the inevitable backlash from people who couldn’t get to grips with the idea of a midwife being treated like the digital world’s equivalent of Madonna. Nasty posts started appearing on Mumsnet.

Clemmie, pictured, who has four children, decided to take a break, and no wonder. As she wrote in her returning post: “I’m just me… my skills lie in midwifery, a vocation that I had dreamed about since I was eight years old, they don’t lie in PR or marketing, so I’m learning a lot from this Instagram world as I go along, as I know we all are.”

This is all unchartered territory; we should remember that many “influencers” are normal human beings like you and me who find themselves in positions of power by accident. There is an argument that people who “put themselves out there” should be thick skinned – but what a nasty world it would be if only cold and emotionless people rose to the top. When used right and, crucially, in moderation, that is the upside of social media: it gives us access to all sorts of personalities, not just the ambitious ones. Personally, I’d rather be celebrating midwives like Clemmie than the reality TV nobodies who hog the limelight.