The rise of ‘safety fatigue’ among parents

By Dr. Edith Bracho-Sanchez, CNN

(CNN) — I just learned from a firefighter on Instagram that leaving my child’s bedroom door open at night makes it much more likely he would die in the event of a fire. Closing it, on the other hand, would keep the flames outside his room and ensure his survival, he assured me.

Yet another new fear I unlocked while scrolling social media.

What did I do with this newfound wisdom, you may ask? Nothing, apparently. My 4-year-old can’t sleep if we close his door, and my 5-month-old still sleeps in our room. I glanced at the smoke detectors and saw the lights signaling they were working, and I called it a night.

The thing about my social media feed, though — and I suspect I’m not alone — is that videos such as the firefighter’s are presented side by side with videos on things like drowning prevention. On some level, most can tell the difference between what applies to us and is a reasonable measure for our kids’ safety and what is not. But the more scary videos I see on my feed lately, the faster I scroll past. I am so tired I cannot do one more thing.

I am embarrassed to admit my exhaustion at looking after my kids’ safety. I’m not just a mother of two; I’m a pediatrician. Vigilance is supposed to be my job. For what it’s worth, I take solace in what I’m hearing in my practice these days — versions of my own scroll-and-flinch from parents who are otherwise thoughtful, engaged and doing everything right.

These parents are not careless. They’re exhausted. I believe there’s a term for what’s happening to us, even if it isn’t official medical language yet: “safety fatigue.” To me, this is what happens when the volume of warnings — real and exaggerated, urgent and negligible — gets so loud that we lose the ability to tell them apart. We start tuning all the warnings out, including the ones that matter.

How to tell risk from fear

The firefighter wasn’t lying. “Close before you doze” is a real campaign built on real research. Fire scientists at UL Research Institutes’ Fire Safety Research Institute found that a closed door can keep a room dozens of degrees cooler and far less toxic during a house fire than one left open. That’s true. It’s also true that it’s rare to have a fire reach a child’s bedroom while they’re asleep in it.

That’s the trap. A piece of safety advice can be completely accurate and still not be the thing you need to worry about the most tonight. Psychologists call this the availability heuristic: We think of danger, or the probability of an event, not by how likely it is, but by how easily we can recall an example of it.

A dramatic video, such as one with side-by-side images of bedrooms of kids who made it in a fire and those who didn’t, is something we remember. A statistic is often not. So, the rare house fire crowds out our attention for something far more mundane and far more likely to hurt our kids, like a car ride without a properly installed car seat, or a pool without a fence.

When I’m trying to sort a real risk from a frightening one, I ask two questions: How often does this actually happen to children? How much does the fix cost me in time, money or peace of mind? Rare events with quick fixes I don’t have to think about constantly — a smoke detector, a safe gun-storage box — are worth doing even if the odds are long. Rare events that demand constant vigilance to prevent, such as the door-closing ritual, are the ones I’ve learned to let go of without guilt.

Who to trust amid the noise

Part of what makes digesting all the advice so hard is that the loudest voice in a parent’s feed is rarely the most qualified one. Researchers who studied top-performing TikTok content in the “natural parenting” and wellness space last year found that most of the health claims in those videos were misleading, and that 80% of that misinformation was coming from other parents and influencers (not medical professionals). It doesn’t mean every parent-creator is wrong or every doctor is right. It means the algorithm is optimized for engagement, not accuracy, and fear is extremely engaging.

I tell the parents in my practice to do what I do with my own feed: Check who’s talking, not just what they’re saying. Is this a claim from a pediatrician, a fire scientist or a toxicologist — someone with expertise and something to lose if they’re wrong? Is there a citation, or just a warning and a soundtrack?

Sites such as HealthyChildren.org from the American Academy of Pediatrics and your own child’s doctor may seem unglamorous compared with a viral video, but they’re built to be boring and correct rather than exciting and unverified. To me, that’s a trade worth making.

What keeps pediatricians up at night

Here’s what parents often bring up in my exam room unprompted: rare infections, weird allergies and the multi-symptom syndromes that dominate parenting group chats. Here’s what doesn’t come up but should:

• Guns are now the leading cause of death for American children and teens, having overtaken car crashes several years ago.
• Drowning remains one of the top killers of young children, often in a backyard pool during a moment when children aren’t supposed to be swimming and no one is looking.
• Car seats are still installed incorrectly more often than not.

None of this information is designed to scare you; the opposite in fact. It’s a short, unglamorous list, and every item on it has a boring, well-tested fix:

• Lock up firearms, unloaded and separate from ammunition.
• Fence a pool on all four sides.
• Get your car seat checked by a certified technician.

I’d rather a parent spend their limited attention on those three things than on the 12 viral warnings competing for it this week.

How to prioritize without shutting down

Safety warnings and endless algorithm suggestions operate on the idea that a good parent has no ceiling: If you truly loved your child, you’d have room for one more precaution. You don’t, and I don’t either — and we’re not supposed to. Pick the handful of protections that address what’s common and dangerous, treat them as nonnegotiable, and give yourself real permission to let the rest go without spiraling over it.

That’s not indifference.

In my own house, we own a fire extinguisher. We practiced our escape plan with my 4-year-old this year. It took awhile to get around to it, but we did it. We also sleep with his door open, because a boy who’s slept through the night is a genuinely safer, healthier kid than one guarding a closed door out of fear. Both of those choices come from the same place: My husband and I are paying attention to what actually protects our children and refusing to let an algorithm decide that for us.

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