TikTok’s Matt and Abby Made Headlines After ‘Big Wake-Up Call' Controversy: How Viral Fame Shapes Their Parenting (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Emily Fuller

“We also rarely post in real-time,” Matt adds. Recently, the parents traveled to Memphis to St. Jude Children’s Hospital learning about how to help raise funds for childhood cancer research. At the time, however, Matt says they were posting about their move to a new home in Arizona. “A lot of our content is backdated just for privacy and security.”

Social media users quickly responded to what they read as the Howards' decision to leave their sons unattended on the ship. Several YouTube and TikTok creators made videos detailing safety concerns about the situation.

“Usually if people are upset with us online, it’s usually just some drama accounts on TikTok making videos, or on YouTube or whatever. But what’s different about this one is it hit tabloids and news articles,” says Matt. “I think that was a big wake-up call like, ‘Okay, we got to be very careful when we post something to be very clear with what’s going on.'”

“She was like, ‘I don’t need this. I can make videos and we’ll just have someone post the video for us, and that’ll be it,'” Matt recalls of his wife’s step back from social media. “She just realized, ‘For my mental health, I don’t need to see something negative.'”

It’s not just about the hateful or hurtful voices online either. The parents agree that too much praise can be just as difficult to process as the opposite.

“For anyone to see a mass amount of hate or mass amount of positivity towards them, I think as humans, we’re really not wired for that. It’s very unnatural,” says Matt.

“I remember to take a breath and spend some time with my kid. I’m always spending time with my kids, but really uninterrupted, no phones around time, going to the park, cooking a meal,” she describes.

“I know a lot of good things come from it,” she says. “But for me personally, I just don’t think it’s [something] I have the time for at this stage of life.”

source: people.com