Hillary Wilkinson: (00:00)

As moms, we are always looking for great escape books, a beach read, a naptime novel, and I have great news. I found your next adventure. My guest today lived in Los Angeles for 15 years while working in production and writing for television. And lucky for all of us, she has turned her efforts towards book writing. And I am one of the lucky ones who got a pre-release copy of her new novel. Follow Me. It's a great thriller set in mom influencer culture. It's already been optioned by Amazon MGM Studios and is currently in production as a feature film. Welcome to Healthy Screen Habits, Elizabeth Rose Quinn!

Elizabeth Rose Quinn: (00:58)

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Hillary Wilkinson: (01:02)

From the moment I picked up Follow Me, I could tell I was, I was reading the voice of someone who's in it, someone who's in the trenches of parenting. We've got all these voices and personalities of social media coming at us, am I vibing this right? Like, where are you in your momming journey?

Elizabeth Rose Quinn: (01:27)

Uh, you are vibing that extremely correctly. I have a 6-year-old and a 2-year-old, so I feel like I can see the end of utter chaos, but it's still a ways in the horizon.

Hillary Wilkinson: (01:42)

I'm loving also the fact that social media and influencer culture has been part of cultural norm long enough that people are now not just seeing through it, but they're kind of having some, like, they're like poking fun at it like you do in Follow Me. They're definitely recognizable, kind of almost, I would say, like, um, character studies, if you will, of your different, your different moms that you have where you've got like your trad wife mom-fluencers, and then you've got, um, a specific call out of a character who's got, you know, this very holistic, bread baking, natural living that happens to be subsidized by her husband's family, fortune, . And if anyone needs a refresher on who I, who I, I read this particularly when there was a reference towards a basketball team and jets. I'm like, oh, hey, Ballerina Farm, how you doing there ? You know, ? So, so it's kind of one of those if you know, you know, type reads, but all of that to say like, was that your intent? To poke fun at this? 

Elizabeth Rose Quinn: (03:05)

My intent in a lot of ways, and I totally understand the parallel you're making between one of the characters in Ballerina Farm, but my intent was almost to kind of find the archetypes of these influencer par like mothers. And it's the one who's always redecorating and like doing DIY projects around the house, and you're watching like a time-lapse video of her adding wainscotting while there's a toddler nearby. Or you know, the one who's constantly exercising and is like, everything is spandex and taught. And if you just do, you know, the 800 butt lifts that she does, you also could look like that. And so I didn't really wanna pick one person in particular to have it be a takedown of that singular account so much as a little bit more of a zoomed out generic point of view so that the reader could project whoever they have a pair of social relationship with onto that character mm-hmm . As opposed to them saying like, oh, well I don't follow so and so, so that character doesn't apply to me. It's like, but you probably follow somebody who does do that mm-hmm .

Hillary Wilkinson: (04:07)

Yeah.

Elizabeth Rose Quinn: (04:08)

And I guess really to have a moment of like, these people are telling you what to do, but they don't know you and they're also selling you stuff. And if you see that, I want you to take a pause and go, why? What, what are they selling me? Do I need that ? Why am I taking advice from a stranger, even though I feel like I know them, they don't know you.

Hillary Wilkinson: (04:29)

I think one of the things that moms have always kind of, um, I don't know, just kind of, you've got gotta find your own, your own road on this journey, right? But it used to be that you selected the voices you selected, either whether it was your mom or your mother-in-law, or an aunt or somebody who had been instrumental. And there are, there are lots of voices in the “momosphere”, so to speak now, you know, and have, have you found yourself helped or hindered by some of these other mom influencers?

Elizabeth Rose Quinn: (05:18)

I think for me it felt like I needed to look at these as again, like suggestions from strangers as opposed to direct advice, like from my pediatrician or from my best friend who actually knows my kids and sees how I'm struggling. And to see an influencer talking about like, this is a great way to make healthy meals, to do meal planning. Like what about that works for me and what about it doesn't work for me? As opposed to saying, I should absolutely do it exactly how she's telling me, and I should definitely buy the product that she's selling me at the end. . Like, that was kind of the place where I felt like to engage a fair amount of media literacy whenever I was engaging with these accounts and not taking it as advice that was personalized to me from someone who I actually knew.

Hillary Wilkinson: (06:09)

Which is hard with the algorithmic push because you're like, oh, this is exactly, I was just thinking about doing a coordinated family Halloween costume and now, now this person has, you know, the Pirates of the Caribbean set.

Elizabeth Rose Quinn: (06:27)

Absolutely. Absolutely. And also that idea when I would kind of be looking at it once I started being more critical at the time was like, okay, they're selling me this pot and pan set, but they're also actually selling my attention mm-hmm . To the corporation that's paying them, like they're not making money from the pots and pan set. They're making money from selling my eyeballs to a corporation that's actually where they're making their money. And the idea that they're this middleman in between and we're kind of imagining, oh, they're just giving us info. It's like, no, this info is not for free and your attention is not for free. Right. So maybe be a little more curious when people are trying to monopolize it.

Hillary Wilkinson: (07:09)

In the digital wellness pond that, uh, there's a name for it. It's actually called the Attention Economy. And that's, yeah, that's it. It's that whole, you know, of if you're not the consumer, you are the product and Exactly.

Elizabeth Rose Quinn: (07:25)

Be,

Hillary Wilkinson: (07:25)

Be aware how you're spending your time.

Elizabeth Rose Quinn: (07:27)

Exactly. So

Hillary Wilkinson: (07:29)

All of that, um, I feel like a lot of the young moms that I talk to, I have, um, uh, we have a pediatrician who we consult with, and one of the things that she confided in me was during a number of well-child visits, she said within the first two years, uh, at levels more than she has ever dealt with, she said, I've always had moms who are, um, you know, just entering parenthood. It's a very stressful time in your life. There's a number of women that will deal with postpartum, you know, mental issues. I mean, the hormones are flying, right? Mm-hmm

Elizabeth Rose Quinn: (08:11)

. Mm-hmm .

Hillary Wilkinson: (08:12)

But that being said, she said, I can nearly count on one hand in the past year the number of appointments that have not ended with women in tears. Mm-hmm . And she said, this, this is different. This did not used to be that way. Mm-hmm . And she said, but the moms are, she said, it's, it's breaking them, you know? Mm-hmm . Mm-hmm . The, just all of the different, everything from breastfeeding to the safest this to whatever. I mean, how, in your, in your circles, how are you seeing that hit?

Elizabeth Rose Quinn: (08:58)

I had the, you know, unique experience of many people my age, where my first child turned one, and then a week later, the world closed. Mm. And quarantine began. And to have this really stressful time in your life and all this pressure to do well, to get it right, to be the best parent you can be, and then the world shuts down and your entire universe is kind of scaled down to your phone, and that's your only way to see out. It was so dizzying. And I had just heard the New York Times kind of come back after doing their scream line where I think they, I don't know what they expected, but they set up a scream line for parents, particularly mothers to call in to scream while they were trying to parent at home during COVID and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of women were calling to scream Wow. Hours and hours of screaming and crying, and I'm hiding in the laundry room. And I feel like it was this confluence of events of these expectations. Like, you have all the information in the universe, so there's no reason to not do it perfectly. And then the entire world bottoms out, and you don't have support, you don't have real-life interaction. 

Hillary Wilkinson: (11:56)

Right. But so how has that been different with your 2-year-old? 'cause that was your, that was your first experience. 

Elizabeth Rose Quinn: (12:02)

That was my first,

Hillary Wilkinson: (12:03)

But um, but with your 2-year-old, we were not in lockdown.

Elizabeth Rose Quinn: (12:07)

So different.

Hillary Wilkinson: (12:09)

Yeah. So different. Do you, do you feel though that that, like the, the pressures that you see being brought by the momfluencer culture are still weighing on people?

Elizabeth Rose Quinn: (12:24)

I don't see it as much because I think COVID was so painful for so many reasons that I think people now are just like, that's not real life. I can't, I can't attain that. I, I'm doing the best that I can. And I think also the fact that we're not trapped in our homes anymore. You know, you can't be on mom influencer TikTok all day long because like, you're going to the park 'cause the park is open. Yeah. And like schools are open and you're doing stuff with people who know you and you're talking to teachers who know your kids. And even if you are still on those momfluencer or TikTok, whatever universe, you have all this like real-life interaction to kind of balance it out. And before you really didn't during Covid. And so to have a first child during that was, was rough stuff.

Hillary Wilkinson: (13:15)

Yeah. For sure. So we have to take a quick break, but when we come back, let's get into more sort of like influencer culture and your new book, Follow Me.

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Hillary Wilkinson: (14:51)

I'm speaking with Elizabeth Rose Quinn, author of Follow Me, A Thriller that is equal parts page turning and humorous. I, I had laugh-out-loud moments reading this. And as the story starts, um, after her twin sister, Kiara, goes missing at a momfluencer weekend, Adrian sets out to find her no matter what it takes. And that includes infiltrating the same influencer retreat as the last thing that Adrian wants to be, which is this Insta-mommy. The setting is in this remote ranch in northern California, and it is set up and to be, it's like whatever the next holiday is coming. So it's, it's very, it's very curated and it's very staged. And I, it's like sort of cult adjacent. They've got this charismatic leader, they've got communal crafting, there's fixed smiles and a lot of dead eyes. So it made me, I don't know what made me laugh, and maybe that, I don't know if that what that exposes about me, but it's so, so good.

Hillary Wilkinson: (16:12)

You guys will love it. Get it in your lineup for your summer read. It's, it's awesome. Elizabeth, I feel like most of us are still building awareness around this fallacy of perfect family that you were talking about like before the break when you're talking about Covid. So this, this fallacy of perfect family that we see pictured on social medias and maybe like no one story brought this better to light than Ruby Frank for anyone who needs a quick catch-up. Ruby Frank was a family vlogger who ran the now-defunct YouTube channel Eight Passengers. And in 2023, she was arrested and subsequently convicted of four counts of aggravated child abuse and is currently incarcerated. So did the story of Ruby Frank factor into any of your writing? Or like what, how did that, did that play out any way for you or?

Elizabeth Rose Quinn: (17:27)

I was not aware of Ruby Frank, actually. Oh, I am, I'm a Ruby Frank novice. And, but what I will say is I did hear about those kind of first generation kids from YouTube families turning 18 and starting to speak out and saying my childhood was completely inauthentic. There was no moment for me to just exist. Everything was about the content and my actual childhood, or my feelings were secondary to getting the shot. Mm-hmm . And I think a lot about that and about the way that parents were using their children as like props for content and making money and all these different things, but without the children's consent

Hillary Wilkinson: (18:19)

And, no compensation.

Elizabeth Rose Quinn: (18:20)

And no compensation.

Hillary Wilkinson: (18:21)

Yeah. No, we've only just started seeing legislation getting passed for child compensation of monetized content.

Elizabeth Rose Quinn: (18:28)

Yeah. And, and I, you know, I'm the age where I remember when Macaulay Culkin was like, I'm divorcing my parents. And, you know, learning about like the Mickey Rooney law, I think is what it is about, like child stars and having their parents not be able to spend all the money and working in Hollywood and working on shows where they were child actors and parents really loving the kind of, uh, adjacent stardom that they got. And I'm looking at these kids and they are miserable. 

Hillary Wilkinson: (18:59)

But you see this was was, were you living in, um, LA at that time? Yes. Because you lived in LA for 15 years, right? Yeah.

Elizabeth Rose Quinn: (19:06)

And so I'm working on shows and then, so now the idea that people are like, oh, but it's different 'cause it's YouTube. It's like, it's really not.

Hillary Wilkinson: (19:13)

No. Yeah. No, I, I can remember having these same conversations back in the day where people were to use your words, using their child children as props for content and using their images and their, um, you know, reactions. And you hear about some parents even like quitting their jobs to work on their family brand, so to speak. I remember talking to other moms and saying, gosh, if only there were a case study where we knew how children thrust into early levels of celebrity turn out. Hmm. How could we find out how this ends? You know, when you look at most children celebrities, I mean, the, the end result is, unless it has been very carefully managed, the end result is not great. Right.

Elizabeth Rose Quinn: (20:16)

And a lot of the times the child, you know, actors who have turned out well, one of the things they credit was I had one parent who was like a full-time manager to protect me mm-hmm . And then my other parent maintained their career mm-hmm . So anytime I wanted to quit, the family wasn't gonna be destroyed. Yeah. And, but when your entire childhood becomes the content.

Hillary Wilkinson: (20:42)

Yeah.

Elizabeth Rose Quinn: (20:43)

And I think there's a way that, and I talk about this in the book this way, way that we're all kind of pushed to become brands now and what are, like, what does our grid look like and how many people do we follow? And all this nonsense. Like, we're Coca-Cola and then you have a child that needs to fit into the brand as opposed to who is this child? And how do I help them become who they're supposed to be?

Hillary Wilkinson: (21:08)

Right.

Elizabeth Rose Quinn: (21:09)

That like, it's really the antithesis of parenting in so many ways. , like, I would say in the most basic ways, you know? 

Hillary Wilkinson: (21:17)

Yeah. We spend so much time educating parents about, you know, oh, keeping your child safe online mm-hmm . But this is a whole, 

Elizabeth Rose Quinn: (21:27)

The call is coming from inside the house. Yeah,

Hillary Wilkinson: (21:30)

Exactly. Yes. Mm-hmm . Like this is a whole different level of mm-hmm . Of awareness. Yeah.

Elizabeth Rose Quinn: (21:39)

I, I do also kind of wanna credit, I remember Busy Phillips talking about this and that whenever she was gonna post something of one of her children online, she would show it to them. She would show them the caption, she would ask them how they felt about it. If they ever said, I don't want you to post that. She wouldn't, and also if she ever did, if she ever did any spon-con or any kind of advertisement that a big portion of the money went to her kids in their own account. Like she was very conscious of her being a celebrity and that she had chosen it, but that she wasn't gonna just then like, assume her kids wanted it too. And I appreciated that conversation very much. 'cause I think it is easy for children of celebrities to also fall into this role of like, they're still just becoming content. And that's really unfair.

Hillary Wilkinson: (22:21)

Yeah. Yeah. And I think she had that added lens of having, I mean, she started in the industry very young, you know mm-hmm . Mm-hmm . And I mean that she had that awareness to set up those accounts, to do those things. I think that a lot of, a lot of the family accounts that we see coming out are not, they're not from entertainment industry families. Mm-hmm . It's a lot of families in middle America who have found a new income stream mm-hmm . And it's, um, yeah. I it's, it's like you said, it's turning your family into a brand and recognizing the cost that, that can have.

Elizabeth Rose Quinn: (23:05)

Well, I'm saying to your child that my brand is more important than who you are.

Hillary Wilkinson: (23:09)

Mm-hmm . Yeah. 

Elizabeth Rose Quinn: (23:11)

And you need to conform to the brand, otherwise you're harming me. That's not a message for a child who's decided, like, this week I'm actually gonna be vegetarian, or I really wanna cut my own bangs, or I hate soccer. Or like, whatever banal, normal thing that a child does to try to figure out who they are. To have a parent go, you have to do this for content. Why is the content more important than who the child is?

Hillary Wilkinson: (23:35)

Yeah, it's gets to family philosophy and, um, I, I'm just thinking as we're, as we're talking, 'cause I've also read about, uh, Insta, Insta-Mommies, if you will, who will actually, you know, set up photo shoots for the weekend that go through, you know, multiple seasons. Uh, so we've got, I've the matching holiday jammies shot followed by, okay, now we're all getting into, um, you know, new Year's party wear and now all of this and, and the amount of sugar that gets pushed on the kids while they're, while they're working for the weekend. So it's, it's just, it's a very, very interesting thing to observe. I do not believe that kids are content. And I think that consent is something that should always be requested before posting. I ask for consent before posting any image of anybody. And that makes it so that my feed probably is not very interesting for a lot of people. It's a lot of chickens and dogs, you know,

Elizabeth Rose Quinn: (24:58)

Love a chicken, a chicken .

Hillary Wilkinson: (25:00)

Yeah. So are there any bigger sort of like takeaway messages that you wish people to have after reading Follow me? Or was this just a for fun?

Elizabeth Rose Quinn: (25:12)

No, no, I mean, this isn't quite in line with healthy screen habits, but I think it is like care work is work and so much of what I think pushes people into social media, influencer content creation is because they can't both be a parent and have a full-time job to support their families.

Hillary Wilkinson: (25:34)

 Uhhuh . I agree.

Elizabeth Rose Quinn: (25:34)

And, and so this is a way for like parents to try to make money because like, daycares are too expensive in the United States and nannies are too expensive and or there aren't enough daycares in the area where you live or all these different things. Or you know, your partner travels for work and so now you have to travel. So you can't like all these different factors. And I think if we had a universal basic income in this country where we treated care work, like work, maybe it would lessen the need for people to strive for fame because they would be able to buy the things that they need for their family and feel food secure, housing secure, all those different things. And, and this includes caring for children, but also caring for, you know, dependent adults and aging parents. And so to treat care, work like the work it is as opposed to needing to perform care work for content. And that's the only way that you get paid for it.

Hillary Wilkinson: (26:28)

We have to take a short break, but when we come back, I'm going to ask Elizabeth for her healthy screen habit.

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Hillary Wilkinson: (33:32)

I'm speaking with Elizabeth Rose Quinn, author of the new exciting thriller: Follow Me.  Elizabeth, on every episode of the Healthy Screen Habits podcast, I ask for a healthy screen habit. And this is gonna be a tip or takeaway that listeners can put into practice in their own home. What is yours?

Elizabeth Rose Quinn: (33:59)

So my goal is to do it quarterly. I'm not always on it, but a couple times a year I go through my feed for like, with this in mind for a week. And I say, have I actually engaged with this person? I don't know this account. And if I haven't or if I don't like it or something, I mute it. I don't follow, I mute it. And then the next time I come around and do what I call my little tidy up, I check that mute list. And if that account has not occurred to me once, if I haven't searched them out to see what they've been up to, I unfollow. And it's just a way to keep my count of who I'm following and what voices I'm allowing into my eyes and face and ears at a minimum. And I have it be more intentional. I don't strike up a conversation with every single person in the grocery store. So why am I listening to every single person on this feed if I don't actually listen to them and they're just something for me to swipe past. 

Hillary Wilkinson: (35:00)

I love it. I love it.

Elizabeth Rose Quinn: (35:01)

 A tidy up.

Hillary Wilkinson: (35:01)

It's, yeah, it's a tidy up. And I love that you allow yourself time for a pause. It's kind of like the people who tell you to clean your closet out by taking your hangers and facing them the other direction. And then at the six month mark or at the seasonal mark, whatever hangers are facing the other way. 'cause you haven't taken those clothes out, they're like, have another look at those. Mm-hmm . So I mm-hmm . I like it. As always, you can find a complete transcript of this show and a link to order Follow Me by visiting the show notes for this episode. You do this by going to healthy screen habits.org. Click the podcast button and find this episode. Elizabeth, thank you so much for being here today and creating great entertainment on what can potentially be a dark topic, but you've managed to make it so fun and funny.

Elizabeth Rose Quinn: (35:56)

Well, I am so happy to be here. Thank you so much for having me. And social media is something that we've all gotta just be really conscious of our relationship with it. We don't have to throw it out if we like it, but I hope my book helps people say, think twice about why am I, why am I following this person? , that's all I want.