Anyone who thinks social media platform TikTok is just a place for young people to learn the latest dance routines that are trending has not yet discovered its growing community of teen mothers. One young mother is taking TikTok by storm and her name is Brooke Morton.
She created her TikTok account after giving birth to her daughter, Aloura Lavender, in March 2021, just a few months shy of her 15th birthday. Most of her TikTok videos score a couple of hundred thousand views, but some of her clips go viral. Her video titled "this is my teenage pregnancy story" earned 10.5 million views. That was the clip in which she admitted her pregnancy was not planned.
Morton said pregnancy decision was not taken very lightly
Morton said in the post that as she got pregnant, she knew she was going to keep her daughter. She added that her pregnancy was not taken very lightly and it was really hard for her and for everyone else. Morton revealed on her first-ever YouTube video that she is not the first person in her family to become a teen parent as her own mom and dad were also teenagers when they had children.
Morton no longer attends school in person, according to her TikTok, but she takes online classes so she can stay home with her baby. She said she lives with her baby's dad, 17-year-old Jason Vaughn and Vaughn's father in the upstate New York town of Cornwallville.
And while parenting is the couple's main priority, she and Jason did steal a night away from their daughter to go to their prom back in June. She posted a carousel of three images on Instagram, one of which showed the couple posing with their kid in a lush yard.
Teen moms become instant celebrities on social media
Morton and Vaughan have become instant celebrities on social media, amassing nearly two million followers across YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. They have become part of a larger community of teenage parents supporting each other, and even appearing on each other's platforms across social media.
Cadyn Potvin, who gave birth back in 2021 during her junior year in high school, has 60,000 followers on TikTok and almost 5,000 followers on Instagram. She also makes frequent appearances on Morton's social accounts. Sarah Homrich, a 19-year-old mom of two with 26,000 followers on Instagram and 900,000 followers on TikTok, does not know Morton personally, but they follow each other's accounts.
Dr. Meghan Downey, a New York-based licensed clinical psychologist who works with teens and young adults, said the content that Morton posts should be consumed by their followers with both caution and compassion. She told the New York Post that teen moms have higher rates of depression and postpartum depression compared with mothers over the age of 25. Teen moms are also more likely to experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than other teenage women.
