Keelin Moncrieff: "The online community wasn’t cutting it for me anymore"

Addressing topics like motherhood, sustainability, technology, creativity, community, and self-care across her podcasts, vlogs and virtual book clubs, Keelin Moncrieff has garnered hundreds of thousands of followers on multiple online platforms – all resonating with the genuine sense of curiosity and consideration that shapes the Dublin native’s work.

But in recent years, Keelin – now aged 27, and raising a young daughter – has found her relationship with social media and the online world shifting. She increasingly searches offline, and away from the major social media platforms, for connection.

Of course, Keelin’s interest in how the content and products we consume shapes the world around us is nothing new. Following a year at BIMM Dublin studying vocals, she dropped out – setting off instead on a career in fashion-buying, with the idea that she could “change the world, in terms of sustainability.”

“I thought, if I could get inside, I could change the system,” she elaborates. “But that’s obviously not how it works. If you’re just entering into fashion-buying, you’re usually just doing Excel spreadsheets – it’s actually not that creative. So I quickly changed my mind about that as well.”

Although happy to explore a world outside the stable nine-to-five, when Keelin first emerged as a ‘content creator’, she came face-to-face with the pushback that often accompanies that term.

“At the start, people would definitely go, ‘Are you still doing the selfies?!’” she laughs. “But then people caught on that it was a new way for advertising and marketing. Even my dad [Seán Moncrieff], who is a broadcaster, would be asking me for advice, in terms of social media.

“Before that, it felt a bit like, ‘This is a frivolous career, and it’s going nowhere,’” she adds. “Like everyone was waiting for me to get a ‘normal job’, until they saw that it does have a bit of longevity to it – and there’s different ways to make money from it.”

From the topical issues she addresses on her popular Growing Up with Keelin Moncrieff podcast, to her widely-shared appearance on RTÉ’s Prime Time last year, in which she voiced her frustrations about the housing crisis, Keelin has tapped powerfully into the concerns of her generation.

“I’m just echoing other people’s voices,” she asserts. “Because I have a platform, I feel as if I have a sort of responsibility to do that. It would feel like a waste otherwise.”

But Keelin no longer feels that a social media following, no matter how loyal, really equates to a ‘community’.

“The online community wasn’t cutting it for me anymore,” she remarks. “Especially because I’m leaning away from the major social media, like Instagram and TikTok – because of how detrimental they are to people’s mental health; the kind of narrative that they’re pushing online; how the algorithms work; and there being no real monitoring of misinformation or hate speech.

“I don’t love the way they work, and I don’t like the way that I’m contributing to that – even though it kind of is my job.

“It’s giving you that fake dopamine hit that you’re socialising with other people, when really you’re just speaking into an echo chamber – rather than having real-life conversations, and meeting other people.”

In response, she decided to take the virtual book club she had set up on the Fable app – which had thousands of members – and establish something with a social aspect to it.

“So speed-friending, and then people get to swap books at the same time,” she says of her in-person Book Swap Social events, which have taken place in Dublin, London, Melbourne and beyond. “It has really highlighted the need for socialising – not only for people in my generation, but also for myself. I can see the huge difference it makes even when I have that time, once-a-month, where I’m talking to other people my age.

“You realise maybe the world isn’t going to end,” she continues. “Sometimes, when you’re just on your phone, and that’s how you’re receiving information, everything is sensationalised to the extreme ends of things. That’s how the algorithm works.”

Keelin reckons the impact those increasingly sophisticated algorithms have had on even younger generations is already clear to see.

“I’ve a sister who’s nine, and a niece who’s 10, and you can see how it’s affecting them,” she reflects. “When I was a kid, you might have been taking turns on the PC, playing Club Penguin – but then you were getting in a suitcase and throwing each other down the stairs. A bit of danger!

“When social media first started, I was a teenager,” she adds. “And there was an end to algorithms – you’d reach the end of the feed, lock your phone, put it away. Whereas now it’s set up so that it’s addictive. And the Stories I see are from random people I met in the bathroom five years ago – and I don’t know what my best friends are up to in Australia. Because the algorithm will just push whatever stupid stuff they want you to see.”

Could she envision a real counter-social media movement emerging over the coming years?

“I hope so – especially for my daughter’s generation,” she states. “I hope that it’s leaning in the way where people are either going to start boycotting it, or realise that it’s not helping people socialise at all.”

She prefers “the medium of longer-form content”, she says, such as the vlogs and video essays she shares to YouTube, and her podcasts.

“It’s not as addictive as short-form, and you can express your creativity a lot more,” she explains. “It’s the nature of the game that you have to use the shorter form content to promote your stuff, but I’d like to get to a point where I don’t have to use them.”

Since the birth of her daughter, Keelin has also taken a strong stance on protecting her privacy – choosing not to share her child’s name or face with her followers. But it was a case of learn-as-you-go, she says: when she was first starting out on content creation, she would “share absolutely everything.”

“My family are very open,” she resumes. “My dad has always written columns about his own life. My mam would always tell the neighbours all of our business. So that was very normal to me. Then, once I realised that there’s strangers that know information about me, and I don’t know anything about them, I started to pull back a little bit.

“When I had my daughter, it was an added layer of realisation. I’m still learning what the boundaries are – because there’s no guidebook on what to post online. It’s very different for people who are out as public figures because of their job.”

It’s also important to Keelin to be transparent about her own personal views and political stances.

“After the Trump election in the US, there were a lot of US creators who I was actually trying to figure out if they voted for Trump or not – because I don’t want to be associated with that,” she states. “I wouldn’t be friends with you in real life, so I don’t want to watch your life online. It can be important to know what other people’s values are.”

She recognises that, in the real, offline world, “it’s normal and healthy to have conversations with people who have different views than you – because you can actually come to an understanding and a sort of resolution after it."

"Whereas, online, it doesn’t allow for that," she resumes. "In a comment section, you can’t have the nuanced discourse that you would have in real life. You’re not seeing the person eye-to-eye, and you’re not hearing their tone.

“I know people would argue against this, but I don’t think it’s useful, whatsoever, to follow or watch people who have completely opposite political stances to you," she continues. "Or to even allow that sort of discourse to happen online. All of that should be happening in real life.”

Keelin Moncrieff. Photo: Abigail Ring

Of course, social media isn’t the only obstacle when it comes to building real-world connections and communities.

“There’s also an added element of the cost-of-living crisis – and the actual lack of affordable things to do,” Keelin points out. “It feels like you have to spend money to see people, rather than just being able to meet up.

“There’s such a lack of third spaces,” she adds. “Especially since we don’t have outdoor time. We have like 14 days a year where it doesn’t rain – and even at that, we’re getting in trouble for sitting on the path!”

She compares her own relationship with Ireland to “an ex you keep breaking up and getting back together with…”

“I love Ireland,” she continues. “But it’s sort of like, they’re not good for me, even though I’m putting all this work in, and trying to make it better. They’ve an avoidant attachment! And sometimes I do feel that it’s a bit futile: screaming into the void saying, ‘We need these things’ – and then people going, ‘Well, that’s actually immigrants’ fault…’”

That practice of “punching down, punching sideways, and never punching up” in Ireland is something Keelin finds particularly frustrating.

“We’ll be giving out about the housing crisis, saying, ‘I can’t afford a house’ – and someone will go, ‘Who the fuck do you think you are, thinking you deserve a house?!’ We’re always giving out about each other, or the people who come in from Syria – it’s somehow their fault. But it’s never the people who are actually making the problems to begin with, at the top. And that’s a very frustrating conversation to have, especially on the internet – because, again, it’s not a place for nuance, or critical thinking skills.”

Keelin isn’t completely turning away from the internet. She’s currently developing an app aimed at parents and caregivers, set to be launched in September.

“It’s very useful,” she says, “and it’s in line with the circular economy. I’m not selling a new product or anything like that, and you won’t have to spend money to use it. But I can’t say what it is yet, because I’ll get in trouble!”

Keelin's Book Swap Social events are coming to Galway on July 2; Dublin on July 8; and Cork on July 29.

The Growing Up with Keelin Moncrieff podcast series is available to stream now.