Abbie Herbert Shares How She Keeps Her Kids Safe Online and Off (EXCLUSIVE)
"It takes a village to raise a family," Abbie said. "And I'm pro team asking for help because you can't do it all yourself."
Updated April 15 2024, 11:56 a.m. ET
Being a mom is hard, but being a mom sharing your parenting journey on the internet is even harder. There's already plenty of unsolicited advice thrown at mothers, but when you have a platform consisting of millions of followers, there's pressure to get everything right, especially when it comes to your child's safety.
Abbie Herbert doesn't claim to get it right all the time, but she's trying to use her platform to spread as much good as she can. The mom of two has millions of followers across her various social platforms, sharing her journey through motherhood one day at a time.
Despite her busy schedule, Abbie took a minute to chat with Distractify about the measures she's put in place to keep her kids safe, especially with a platform as big as hers.
Abbie Herbert shared her tips for keeping kids safe — both online and off.
Since she started sharing her parenting journey online three years ago, Abbie has partnered up with Duracell to give a platform to their "Bitter is Better" campaign, advocating for a non-toxic bitter coating on the small but harmful batteries.
"To be honest, before I got on this campaign, I didn't know the dangers of lithium coin batteries till I saw some videos on TikTok of other moms who experienced their children, you know, ingesting the batteries," she told us via Zoom.
"So I was like, with my platform and the following I had I knew I had to jump on this opportunity to work with [Duracell] and bring awareness to the true dangers because [lithium coin batteries] are so tiny and so small, and it literally takes one second for a child to put it in their mouth."
With more than 15 million followers on TikTok alone, this mom of two has been using her platform to advocate for the batteries to keep her kids — and her followers' kids — safe.
"We hear about the sleep safety, the car seat safety, but you don't hear about battery safety at all," she said, admitting that parenthood has become a learning journey for her and her husband — especially as the conversation around sharing your kids on the internet has evolved.
"There's a lot that I'm learning as I go on," she said. "And as the internet is changing, my husband and I have set our own personal boundaries, and like what we feel good with. We kind of took a reset, you know, being able to still share our kids... but also do what we feel is safe for them and for our children."
Abbie's biggest tip for new moms? Don't be afraid to ask for help.
"It takes a village to raise a family," she shared. "And I'm pro team asking for help because you can't do it all yourself."
Abbie said that through sharing her journey through parenthood online with her followers, she's received a lot of advice. Though not all of it was necessarily warranted, she admitted some of it was incredibly helpful.
"I have received some feedback, where it's like, I was like, 'Oh, maybe I wasn't doing that right,' or, 'This is a right way,'" she said. "I love sharing myself online and sharing my journey, because then I can get that help in places that I'm missing... If I can share and help someone else out there, that's why I do it."