In Instagram feeds that are often teeming with curated, contrived content, a recent post from Monette Wagner stood out for her disarming openness. Looking into the camera, the 36-year-old mother of three said in the video: "Divorce can feel like a death."
In what resembles a digital journal, Wagner has posted videos in real time about the emotions and life changes that have come with her recent divorce: developing financial independence, getting used to co-parenting, and moving on from heartbreak. A professional photographer in Indianapolis, she originally used Instagram to share her work, but recently turned the page in this more vulnerable direction. She has also posted about wanting to reconnect with the confident, curious person she was more than a decade ago — before she met her now-former husband — revisiting passions from her teens, including skateboarding and learning to DJ. "I wanted to show my kids that you can still be strong even through these hard days. I wanted to show them how strong hope is," she said. "I feel more confident. I feel resilient. I feel like I faced my fears of showing up scared, of putting myself out there as my authentic self."
On TikTok, where niche content categories sometimes earn a nickname, content delving into marital woes has been dubbed "divorce-tok." The #divorce hashtag has millions of posts on both TikTok and Instagram. The level of detail creators choose to divulge varies widely: some, like Wagner, don't post about their ex-partners; others provide detailed accounts of their marriage's issues and the messy, lengthy process of finalizing a divorce. Social media's voyeuristic streak loves story-time-style videos where creators talk as if chatting on the phone with a friend, sparing no details.
Jen Hamilton, a labor and delivery nurse with more than 5 million TikTok followers, recently shared the "nitty-gritty" details of her divorce: her husband led what she called a "double life," and she shared videos of herself crying, cracking jokes, and processing the news with her signature optimism. In a more celebratory post, she shared photos from what would have been her 14th wedding anniversary, marking it with a "Jendependence Day" party: more than a dozen friends gathered at her North Carolina home as she burned her bedsheets and toasted her future. "I feel like if I share my pain with you, I don't feel so alone, because there's so many other people going through the exact same thing," she said.
Why would people share topics too difficult to discuss with family and friends with potentially millions of strangers? Tasha R. Dunn, an associate professor at the University of Toledo who studies how we present our lives on social media, says digital connections are simply easier to forge: "There are few divorce support groups in a given community, but you have something at the tip of your fingers on your phone or computer where you can find people who've literally shared your same experience. People maybe feel a little bit safer to put that content out there rather than to have a physical town hall."
There are also sober voices. Los Angeles matrimonial attorney Jackie Combs does not recommend sharing anything divorce-related publicly: "Every single reel that you put out there, every piece of content that's related to it, you have to presume that somebody is watching and is going to use it as evidence, if needed." Creators also face intense trolling — Daly has been told she's "ruining people's lives." She takes it in stride: the negativity is "just proving that there is still a stigma and a taboo around divorce," and it keeps her motivated to share "how divorce just doesn't have to be the end of your life and how it can actually be an amazing beginning."