How I’m fighting the anti-vaxxers
Isabel Mohan explains why her new-mum forum takes a zero-tolerance approach – and argues others should do the same
Last week, with the disturbing news that the UK has lost its measlesfree status, the Prime Minister called on social media companies to clamp down on anti-vaccination propaganda. At Mush, the networking app for mums where I work as head of content, we’ve been battling this issue for a while – and earlier this year, we took the decision to ban all anti-vax messages. Any post of this nature is deleted by our community team, who then send an email to the user in question politely explaining our zero-tolerance stance.
Six months on, it’s still something we confront every day. Most of our users are new mothers, going through all the baby milestones for the first time. But whenever they post questions about jabs, for every 10 users who send reassuring comments about their own experiences, an anti-vaxxer will pop up spouting nonsense about routine baby vaccinations causing everything from autism to convulsions to mercury poisoning. It’s fake news with a big dose of manipulation and mum-shaming.
There’s no doubt that social media has played a part in the recent resurgence of the antivax movement, but as we all know, conspiracy theories about immunisations are nothing new.
I still feel slightly embarrassed to admit that, although I had most of the standard vaccinations as a baby, by the time I was a teenager in the early Nineties, my own mum had become vaguely anti-vax. I distinctly remember being picked on at school (“You’re gonna have blind deaf babies”) when she opted out of me getting the rubella jab
that was offered in my early teens because she was concerned about possible side effects. I was the only one in my year group who didn’t have it and I remember feeling ashamed. It was only when I was pregnant with my first baby that I found out I was immune to rubella, having had a mild case of German measles as a toddler.
It’s amazing to me that, 25 years later, some of the arguments from women on both sides of the debate haven’t really moved on from playground insults. Mums who are probably perfectly pleasant people in real life type things on social media like, “I hope your child gets measles.”
It can be challenging to implement a zero-tolerance policy while also being proud to provide an inclusive and supportive environment. Only a tiny handful of our users don’t vaccinate their children, but they’re a very vocal minority. When we delete their posts, we’re accused of censoring their rights to freedom of speech and creating a hostile environment. “This isn’t friendly or inclusive!” they cry. Laughably, we have even been accused of being in bed with the “big pharma” companies. “How much are you paid to advertise this fear inducing, uneducated and biased post?” wrote one anti-vaxxer. As a start-up, we can but dream of that kind of money.
We disagree that by banning anti-vax discussion, we’re being unfriendly; vaccinating your children is the friendly thing to do. There are many other controversial issues that we do allow mothers to debate, as long as they keep it friendly – the ones that crop up time and time again tend to be around weaning, breast-feeding and sleep training – but the huge difference is, those are all personal decisions that don’t have an impact on other families. When it comes to vaccinations, there is simply no debate or discussion to be had.
Reports about vaccines causing side-effects – including links between the measles, mumps and rubella jab (MMR) and autism, peddled by disgraced doctor Andrew Wakefield in the Nineties – are not only false, but a danger to public health. Many parents of autistic children find it upsetting because anti-vaxxers who still, bizarrely, support Wakefield, are effectively saying they would rather their child caught a dangerous, preventable disease than had autism. Users who want to flag up dodgy comments spotted on Mush used to be met with the same options you’ll find on most social media platforms, such as “spam” and “bullying”, but earlier this year we added a simple “anti-vax” check box too. We’re a small company, so there’s no reason why the big dogs of social media such as Facebook couldn’t do something similar, just as the Prime Minister called for, this week. It would be a much faster and more efficient way of controlling the chaos that the anti-vax movement is trying to create, which spreads online so quickly, much like a virus itself.
Just last week, when we posted on our Instagram channel about the latest developments and reminded our followers about our policy around discussions about vaccinations, we were largely met with praise and support.
But then the anti-vaxxers popped up, from all over the world (many of them Americans who had followed us just to disagree with us), to voice their fury. One mother said: “What a s----y post this is. Won’t be following anymore. The next post will prob state ‘mums who bottle feed are not good mums’,” as if these things could be remotely comparable.
Others say unhelpful and ignorant things such as, “I didn’t have my jabs and I’m fine,” or even: “My daughter had measles and she’s fine.” Such stances, of course, will have stemmed from a good place – wanting what’s best for their children. As the mother of an 18-month-old daughter and a fouryear-old son, we’ve been through both the initial MMR and the preschool boosters in the past few months. Both were absolutely fine, but obviously taking the children to be injected was no fun and I remember searching the web for possible side effects.
Unfortunately, thanks to the internet and social media, researching how you can protect children from harm is sending many people down a rabbit hole of lies and drivel.
For me, though, and the vast majority of parents, baby vaccinations are as much a rite of passage as changing the first nappy. The minuscule risks and side effects of vaccination pale into insignificance against the alternative: our children catching Victoriansounding diseases and potentially infecting others who might be more vulnerable and unable to vaccinate for medical reasons.
This is one of the reasons Sarah Hesz, the founder of Mush, feels
The internet and social media send many people down a rabbit hole of lies
so strongly about it. Her daughter, Noa, was born at just 29 weeks last year; thankfully, she’s now a thriving toddler, but taking a premature newborn out and about into the city streets before she was strong enough to have vaccinations cemented Sarah’s view that vaccinating is a social obligation and public health issue and should not be a choice. In Italy, for instance, unvaccinated children are not allowed to attend school, a policy that some private nurseries in the UK are now also implementing and that we wholly support at Mush.
It has now become clear that clamping down on anti-vaxxers isn’t enough; what social media companies should be doing is normalising vaccinations and being pro-vax, rather than just anti antivax. After all, these companies, and particularly apps for parents such as Mush, are in a unique position to provide information and reassurance about jabs in a friendly, modern and digestible way.
Ultimately, the only way to tackle anti-vaxxers and the potential devastation they could cause is to remind everyone of the truth: vaccinating is as safe and normal as holding your child’s hand to cross the road.