Anna and Jonathan Saccone Joly are the couple who have taken YouTube by storm by the daily video blogs about their lives, and their lives of their two daughters, one son, and six pet dogs. The Irish couple post new videos on YouTube on a day-to-day basis, have nearly two million subscribers, and have posted over 2,700 videos detailing their lives together. Now, the couple have written a new novel, the SACCONEJOLYs and the Great Cat-Nap, and sat with HELLO! to discuss their new book and their home life.
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Anna and Jonathan vlog about their lives as parents
Speaking about trying to remain honest on social media, Anna revealed that she would never want to pretend her life is perfect, explaining: "Sometimes, especially after just having a baby, you go on social media and you just feel so bad. It's like, 'How does every other mother seem to have her stuff together and I don't? It feels like my life is falling apart!' So I never ever want to make anyone else feel that way so I'm always as up front as I can possibly be about the fact that none of us have our stuff together. Every mum feels guilty, ever mum feels like they're failing sometimes and could do better and we love to compare ourselves to everyone else and social media is terrible for that."
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Speaking about the downside of sharing his family life on YouTube, Jonathan admitted that although their honesty on their vlogs occasionally results in criticism, he knows that he can help people who are going through a similarly difficult time. "When you're honest, you invite people to come in and criticise," he explained. "But when people come up and they might cry, and they might hug you, because I've been there for them and honestly there for them in a moment when they needed that companion, had we not been honest because we didn't want that criticism, I wouldn't have been able to reach that person. I'm going to take that cost of being ridiculed online but at least I know I'm reaching people – the people that need to be reached."
The couple chatted to HELLO! about their new children's book
However, the dad-of-three admitted that Internet trolls were difficult to deal with, particularly when they criticise his parenting. He added: "That's your weakness. That's where you feel the most vulnerable. Because your kids are the most important thing, but there's no right or wrong with kids."
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The pair also spoke about their new book, which they revealed they wrote based on their six dogs. Jonathan said: "It's based on a true story! We have six dogs, for real, and we have the kids, and our oldest daughter Amelia has been on about wanting a cat… for years we've had dogs, we've always put personalities to them and voiced them… so in the story it relates to the people who watches our video and knows the personalities."