Is it possible that on X — the social media site formerly known as Twitter and sometimes called “the hell site” — there remains a font of delight and edification, a place to witness laughter and even love?

The answer, believe it or not, is yes. It is the account of Dan Wuori, an education policy consultant, who posts videos of babies and toddlers figuring out the world, often with parents as loving coaches. Wuori provides the colour commentary, explaining key concepts in child development.

His feed is educational, but also, simply put — “awwwww”.

In one clip, a father is celebrated for taking an extra 30 seconds to narrate an everyday routine, showing his infant daughter several possible outfits. “Listen to the way
he describes each,” Wuori points out. “To all the extra vocabulary he exposes her to. And to the warm and happy tone he uses as she looks on adoringly.”

Even as many users have walked away from X, Wuori’s account has grown over the past year, from 20,000 to 145,000 followers.

“To say that it snowballed once I started really focusing on the videos is a bit of an understatement,” he said in an interview, from his home in South Carolina.

He said he has only reposted publicly available videos, and has never received a complaint from a parent for sharing content, in part, he guessed, because his commentary is so upbeat and positive.

Last year, noting the explosion of short-form video clips of cute children on TikTok and Instagram, he decided to try something new: trawling those platforms for videos of babies and young children, babbling, playing and giggling, and reposting them.

“They’re undoubtedly cute,” he said. “What I’m looking for is where might I have something to say about a video, or what can we learn from what’s happening in the video? How does it illustrate a particular aspect of child development?”

In a social media world of complex, sometimes ideological parenting advice — with scripts for “gentle parenting”, “attachment parenting”, “respectful parenting”, “French parenting” — Wuori posts no tantrums, and no bad behaviour from parents, either.

In one video, an 11-month-old, sitting on the floor near a rack of shoes, is entranced by her shadow, cast by the afternoon sun onto a nearby door. “Check out this little scientist,” Wuori writes in the post, explaining that the child probably realises the shadow is mirroring her movements, but not that she is controlling the shadow. That type of “self-recognition”, he explains, typically develops around the age
of 3.

Wuori, 52, said that he has lived almost all of his life in Columbia, South Carolina, where he grew up steeped in talk of child development, as the son of a paediatrician and a pediatric nurse.

Some of his posts, which are engagingly written, without jargon, are shared thousands of times and picked up by news websites.

His community even has its own shorthand. Among his most popular posts, for instance, are those about “serve and return” interactions, in which babies and caretakers mirror one another’s expressions. In the process, they bond and build the child’s social, emotional and cognitive skills.

In Wuori’s world, good child rearing is thoughtful and intentional, but not complicated.

When 3-year-old Mason’s mother encourages him to place his own order at a restaurant, Wuori cheers her parenting — “A+” — but also acknowledges the cooperative server for teaching him “a powerful, if unspoken, message: You are capable.”

While social media is Wuori’s medium, there is often a subtle, unstated reminder to step away from devices: that a parent’s or grandparent’s most powerful teaching tool is their unmediated attention — even if only for a few minutes.

Nor do families need to spend a fortune on toys. The best one for the early years, Wuori often notes, is a simple baby doll.

New York Times News Service