The village lives inside our phones

We yearn for a village. Is the one we built online enough?

As a parent of young children, I often hear the term “village” used, as in, “It takes a village to raise a child.”

It’s something that I didn’t properly consider until I did have kids. Or perhaps, if I did, I interpreted the concept of the village as meaning that if you see a kid alone and hurt, you should help them. But the more realistic necessity of village is because the demands of raising a human being are greater than any one (or two) parent can bear.

Having a village of support shouldn’t be exclusive to parents though. We all could use a village. We shouldn’t shoulder all the challenges of life alone — being sick for the first time when living alone, grieving the loss of someone important to you. Or even, simply, baking a cake and realizing you don’t have eggs, having your tire pop on the highway with no AAA membership, desperately needing to borrow an iron on the morning of an important interview.

In my early twenties, on the heels of graduating from college, I did have this village. I knew some of my neighbors that I could call if I needed an egg, I had multiple friends to call who could help me change my spare, I had a long list of people who would drive me to the doctor or drop me off some soup.

As I grew older, I started to live more of my life online. I relied more and more on services like Instacart and Uber. I Googled answers to my questions instead of calling my parents. I figured out that my cell phone plan came with roadside assistance.

I became, and I still am, entirely reliant on these modern conveniences. How would I have survived being sick all alone, if not for the ability to deliver cold medicine and hot soup to my front door?

Older generations would laugh. Of course, they did survive. They had each other.

I suppose I didn’t really yearn for my missing village until I became a parent. Up until that point, my virtual support system was enough to get me through on my own. And in my twenties, I felt proud to have some independence — to “do it all.” When my first kid came along, I was certainly humbled.

In those early, hazy newborn days, the reality of my isolation began to sink in. I ended up spending hours on my phone searching for answers to questions that only time could really answer. I began following parenting account after parenting account on social media in a desperate attempt to feel understood. I was undoubtedly spiraling, and scrolling was only fueling my anxiety, yet I couldn’t stop.

Things I didn’t do? Call and text my friends and family for help. I sent them pictures of my growing baby and answered their check-ins with an aloof “Can’t complain!!” I did not once ask for a favor.

Without realizing my own hypocrisy, I was lamenting my own personal lack of a village, seeking an empty one out on-screen, and avoiding reaching out to my own existing community.

Where’s my village?

My friends and my family did not stop existing when I had a baby, and I ached for more support, so why didn’t I get that village I was hoping for?

Let’s start with some accountability: I never asked for help.

I don’t think it was pride, but asking for help requires a level of vulnerability I hadn’t tapped into since I was a child. Maybe it was the hustle culture of my twenties that told me I could do it all, so when I realized I couldn’t, I felt like a failure. Who wants to admit defeat?

I also know that I felt guilty asking for help with problems that I, arguably, could solve on my own. Why would I ask for someone to come over and take my trash out? Surely, I could suck it up and take care of it on my own. Why ask for advice when I could JFGI (Just Fucking Google It, as social media so smugly taught me)? Why ask for help with meals when Uber Eats or Seamless was only a few clicks away?

I know that I am a people pleaser at heart, but it felt like it was more than that. I didn’t want to inconvenience people, but also, I felt like if I did ask for help, I owed something in return. If my in-laws watched the baby while I got my haircut, I’d return with lunch and a nice bottle of wine. If a friend brought over food, I’d send flowers as a thank you. Everything was a transaction, but did it need to be? Of course not. This was a narrative I had concocted in my head.

There’s also been a huge surge in conversations around boundaries in recent years. This is a vital conversation, we should have boundaries in place for friends and family members who take more than they give. Yet, with all the well-intentioned advice on social media, there seemed to be so many inconsistent “rules” about how and when to visit a friend who just had a baby.

Let me give an example: I saw one Reel that was trending about how you should never ask friends who just had a baby to come somewhere that requires a drive in the middle of the day. The creator claimed that this is when the baby needs to sleep, that there are too many logistics to get in the car and go out, and that you’re asking too much of a new mom.

Maybe these things were true for that mom, but I had the opposite experience. I was dying to get out of the house, willing invitations to go do something. My baby would sleep in the car or he wouldn’t. We’d all survive one way or another, but it would be something to do!

This well-meant advice gets passed around on social media, then there become “rules” in place even though we all have unique experiences and desires.

The one thing that’s missing — an actual and honest conversation with the people in our community.

The online village

And so, more and more, we turn to our digital village in lieu of our physical one. We rack up the fees for ordering delivery food and overnight Amazon deliveries. We find answers to our burning questions on online forums and by doomscrolling parenting accounts in the middle of the night. When we are desperate for help, we JFGI instead of calling a fellow mom for advice.

I’ve been thinking about this concept for a while now — how we cry foul that we have no village, how we use the Internet as a replacement, and where that leaves us. Then recently, I stumbled on Work Wife’s two-part series on this very subject.

From Part One: She had a baby, I Lost a Friend:

“I saw a TikTok recently where a guy was talking about how capitalism thrives on the fact that we don’t have community. That’s why we have Uber instead of asking a friend to take us to the airport. That’s why we have meal delivery services instead of friends bringing us food. That’s why we have postpartum support specialists instead of aunts, cousins, and friends helping us through those early months.

We don’t talk to each other anymore. This hyper independence is actually benefiting capitalism the most.

And then, when we enter a life stage where we desperately need support, we find ourselves looking around, wondering where is everyone?

This is where the conversation gets uncomfortable”

It goes beyond these services. The number of parenting accounts on social media is staggering. There’s something for everyone. Sleep training to cosleeping, gentle parenting to authoritative parenting, screen time tips to screen time abstinence, baby led weaning to purees, breastfeeding advice, OT advice, PT advice. It’s all right at the tip of your fingers.

I genuinely don’t know what kind of parent I would have been without some of this guidance in my early years. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I don’t know. It’s complicated.

How can we reconcile the good and the bad of the Internet?

In some ways, I’m grateful for some of the resources I’ve found over the years of being a parent. I know some of my closest friends parent differently than me, and that’s okay! Had I only relied on them for advice, would I have found the same groove I am in right now? I’d like to think yes, but it’s probably wishful thinking.

A paid village

What constitutes our village in 2025? Social media accounts, search engines, grocery and food delivery services, Amazon, and a few friends and family (if you’re lucky). That doesn’t cover it though does it? There’s still a house to clean, meals to cook, things to organize, kids to care for.

If we’re financially comfortable, we’re fortunate enough to employ a new addition to our village — paid support. This can be a nanny, a housekeeper, a professional organizer, a babysitter, a house manager, or any version of the above. Work Wife goes into depth about this in Part 2 of her Village series, outlining the different options and for her paid subscribers, she breaks down exactly how she does it with paid support.

From Part 2: Here’s What My Village Actually Costs:

“Here’s where it gets tricky. Some people have a built-in village: nearby family, a mom group that functions like a third partner, or a best friend who shows up with coffee and no judgment.

Others have to build one, which is a whole process (you can read about it here).

And then there’s the paid village—nannies, housekeepers, laundry services, and a literal fleet of people making life manageable.”

This is a tough subject to breech because frankly, it will look different for everyone. Some people desperately need these resources and can’t afford them. Some people pay money, as Work Wife explains, to avoid the “emotional labor” that can come with asking for help.

I’ll say this on paid help — it’s a huge privilege. It’s not a guarantee. You might want to avoid the emotional labor of asking people for help, but simply cannot afford the spare $100+.

A new kind of village

Work Wife comes to the following conclusion in the second part of her series:

“The modern motherhood dilemma is this: You either have built-in support from family and friends who help because they love you (but also have feelings, opinions, and unspoken expectations), or you build a paid village that costs real money (but often comes with less emotional labor).”

My POV is a bit more of a building-blocks approach. The village will never be what it was for our ancestors. We don’t live in communities where we all raise each others children, share our food, share our resources. That’s not the trajectory of our future.

We instead have to build our own approach. We have to maintain a healthy balance of all the pieces.

• Friends and family: In the corner that we are likely lacking the most, we must start putting in more work here. Call your friends. Ask for advice (it’s free!). Be there for them when they need someone. Jump through hoops to help people. Be inconvenienced! Ask your neighbor for a cup of sugar. Offer to watch your friends baby. Get uncomfortable if this doesn’t come naturally to you. Eventually, it will.

• Online village: If you’re on social media, I urge you to cull the parenting accounts down to the bare minimum. Or consider muting and only checking in occasionally. See if they offer a newsletter or post a blog instead. We don’t need a firehose of parenting advice. Curation is key here.

• Paid village: If this is something that fits in your budget, amazing! Use it as a tool. Don’t forget about your friends and family. If you can’t afford this, that’s okay.

I know a lot of this is around parenting, but it’s just the clearest example. This can apply to any life stage. If you aren’t a parent, this doesn’t exclude you from needing a village of support.

In fact, if you aren’t a parent, I urge you to not make the same mistake I did — isolate yourself as some expression of your “I can do it!” independence. It’s okay to ask for help. It’s okay to ask for someone’s lived experience instead of asking the Google machine or AI to explain it for you.

You must be there for your community, so you have people to fall back on when you need it the most, be it parenthood, or simply life.

It’s a beautiful world out there, let’s enjoy it together.