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This Mom’s Viral Photo Is Why You Should Never Judge a Mom on Her Phone

Molly Lensing, a mother of three, was stuck in a Colorado airport in August 2016, with her then 2-month-old daughter Anastasia, when a stranger snapped her photo and shared it to his Facebook page. Lensing only learned about the picture after it went viral with more than 65,000 shares.

In the image, Lensing is seen staring at her cellphone while Anastasia rests on a blanket next to her mom’s feet. The caption read: “Albert Einstein said, ‘I fear the day that technology will take on our humanity . . . the world will be populated by a generation of idiots.’”

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The post received thousands of comments and many of them were vicious. “Someone should have reported this picture and taken it to social services,” wrote one person. Added another: “I hope someone turned her in for child abuse.”

What the photo doesn’t show is that Lensing and her infant had spent nearly 20 hours sitting in airports during the Delta computer shutdown.

“Anastasia had been held or in her carrier for many hours. My arms were tired. She needed to stretch,” Lensing told TODAY Parents. “And I had to communicate with all the family members wondering where the heck we were.”

After the picture went viral, Lensing, a pediatric nurse, feared she would lose her job. “I had recently started working on a labor floor and I was terrified of my co-workers or boss seeing the photo comments and believing that I should no longer work with infants,” she said in her interview with TODAY Parents. “Thankfully this never happened.”

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