Feeding kids can be a daily battle. But you wouldn’t know it looking at Instagram

Many families find feeding children a constant challenge. A favourite food is suddenly refused, someone is grumpy after a long day, siblings fight at the table.

But if parents and caregivers are turning to social media for advice, it may do more harm than good. Because here, feeding kids looks downright easy.

Our new research found Instagram is flooded with highly polished content that can perpetuate unrealistic standards of mealtimes. This could be adding to the frustration and guilt many caregivers already face.

Our study

We know parents face many pressures when it comes to feeding their kids, but little is known about how social media may be contributing to these pressures.

To find out how family meals are portrayed on social media, we looked at a popular platform, Instagram. With about 2 billion users, Instagram proffers a seemingly endless carousel of images and videos related to food, cooking and eating.

For our study, we downloaded the top 15 posts from the hashtags #familymeals, #familybreakfast, #familylunch and #familydinner every week for 14 weeks from February to May 2024, to analyse what was being posted.

Lots of ‘meals on a plate’

Unsurprisingly, most posts depicted food and drink, typically meals on a plate, the cooking process, or step-by-step recipe instructions.

Many posts included “healthy foods” from the five core food groups. Interestingly, #familybreakfast contained the most “unhealthy foods”, such as pancakes, waffles and big fry-ups.

But few posts promoted realistic, everyday family meals. Most images depicted highly polished and staged kitchens, plated foods and mealtimes.

To meet the ethics approval for our research, we are not able to publicly share the posts in our study. But below are images similar to those we found.

Where’s the mess?

It was rare to see posts with a toddler hanging off mum’s leg while she cooked, or a kid getting cranky because they are hungry. We didn’t see many kitchen benchtops with scattered ingredients, or plated food with sauce around the edges.

In reality, family meals are often made in a rush, squeezed between daycare pickups, sports training, work and school. Caregivers often describe mealtimes as messy, chaotic and noisy.

Image captions often contained recipes described as “quick”, “easy” or “family-friendly”.

However, there were few posts with families actually eating these meals together – which makes us question how “easy” these meals might actually be. These “easy” recipe posts also assume life always goes to plan, kids help set the table and want to eat what has been prepared (sometimes a simple meal of baked beans on toast can still result in chaos).

Few posts depicted people – they were more about the “perfect” food. Where they did, it was usually a woman or mother.

Men or fathers, and children were rarely depicted. The majority of family mealtime content was also posted by women and mothers. This messaging may further reinforce outdated gender roles and division of food-related labour.

What do parents need to keep in mind?

Instagram may offer caregivers quick, easy and family-friendly meal ideas. But it’s important to remember not everything you see on social media is real.

Algorithms favour popular content, and as a visual platform, Instagram posts are often picture-perfect and aesthetically pleasing. Messy kitchens and chaotic mealtimes do not make for visually appealing content.

So try not to compare your meals to the curated content and perfect dishes you see on social media. It is unlikely this is how a family cooks or eats every day. Food content may also be professionally filmed or photographed.

What works for one family may not work for yours. If you see a new recipe or idea, give it a try. But don’t be discouraged if it doesn’t work out. It can take up to ten exposures to a new food for a child to even agree to taste it, and some children are more adventurous eaters than others.

Also remember, healthy meals don’t need to be complicated. Look out for simple recipes with plenty of vegetables.

Mealtimes also do not need to look perfect to be healthy and enjoyable.

Post about real life

To promote more realistic, relatable social media content, we need to start posting it. Sharing images or videos of everyday dishes and family meals may support other parents to feel more comfortable and less guilty about their own mealtimes.

We know many men and dads are involved in family mealtimes. Sharing these moments may also help other men feel more comfortable getting into the kitchen.

Promoting gender diversity and real-life mealtimes on social media can help shift family mealtime norms, including easing some of the burden of feeding families that often falls on women and mothers.