Why Mayci from Mormon Wives Decided to Stop Sharing Her Kids on Social Media
The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star Mayci Neeley made a thoughtful choice to cease sharing her children’s moments on social media.
“I had gradually started removing them from my online presence about a year before the show’s debut,” Mayci, 31, wrote in her Instagram Stories on Sunday, July 26, referencing the premiere of Mormon Wives season 1. “I began to see the negative repercussions of having my kids online, which I hadn’t fully understood before. Kids shouldn’t be treated as content, and I didn’t quite realize that in my early days on social media.”
Mayci, a mother of three who gained fame as a social media influencer before joining Hulu’s popular reality series about young Mormon moms, shares daughters Harlow, 5, and Charli, 12 months, with her husband Jacob Neeley. She also has a son, Hudson, 10, from her late ex Arik Mack, who tragically passed away in a car accident while she was pregnant at 19.
Before her marriage to Jacob, 30, Mayci was an analyst at Goldman Sachs. She eventually decided to follow her passion for content creation full-time, long before Mormon Wives was approved. In her early posts, Hudson and Harlow occasionally made appearances.
“I never pressured my kids into anything, but in my opinion, they shouldn’t be the center of my content,” Mayci expressed on Sunday. “Initially, I thought it was fun and lighthearted, and I enjoyed making videos until I began to realize the existence of online predators.”
She added, “Looking back, I was naive; I didn’t consider that creeps could be watching my content.”
Mayci later acknowledged that a wave of “haters” emerged with the buzz surrounding Mormon Wives’ much-anticipated 2024 series release.
“I received some truly awful DMs about my children, and some strange individuals were mocking their appearances, which was utterly disgusting,” the Told You So author revealed. “At that point, I realized, ‘That’s it for me.’ I also became aware of how AI and [predators] exploit children’s images for explicit content, which really unsettled me.”
Ultimately, Mayci emphasized her decision to keep her children away from the public eye was rooted in “safety and privacy” concerns.
“I don’t want strangers approaching my kids or recognizing them,” she noted, adding that she “still needs to work through” her previous Instagram posts to remove family photos. “I plan to tackle that in the coming month, but it’s hard because I LOVE sharing my kids, and they bring me immense joy.”
Mayci concluded, “They are my greatest achievement, and I want to showcase some of the beautiful moments. That’s why I still share bits and pieces of them. They are my universe and the biggest part of my life, so not sharing anything about them or the cherished photos I adore feels strange.”
