One afternoon, on a quiet coastal holiday with my family, I lay down for a nap. The day up until then had been full of the simplest pleasures I could recall from my own childhood holidays – cereal in individual serving boxes, running barefoot on the sand, being chased by the tiniest of waves. Then I opened Instagram.

I emerged from my rabbit hole an hour later, bleary-eyed and depressed from consuming reel after reel after reel, from accounts all promising they had cracked the code to parenting. It had started with a mumfluencer promising she could help me become a more playful mother.

She was targeting a specific type of mother with specific anxieties, that I perhaps reveal too much about myself by describing here. Her audience was the mum who wants to be present and playful with her kids but finds it difficult, sometimes boring. The mum who knows how important play is but can’t stay focused for long enough, or doesn’t know how to prioritise. It’s ironic that one of the main culprits for my dwindling attention span........

© The Guardian