An exhausted mother who was pilloried on social media for texting while her baby lay on the floor of an airport has defended her actions a year after a stranger took the photo.

The caption of the viral Facebook post read: “Albert Einstein said, ‘I fear the day when technology takes over our humanity… the world will be populated by a generation of idiots.'”

Molly Lensing, a mother of three, said her privacy was violated when the image, taken at a Colorado airport last year, went viral and warned others against hasty, out-of-context abuse on social media.

The woman from Illinois in the US explained that she had spent 20 hours sitting in airports with her two-month-old baby that day. Since her arms were tired from holding the infant for hours, she had placed her child at her feet for fear of accidentally dropping him.

“We were unlucky enough to be caught in the middle of Delta’s computer shutdown,” Ms Lensing told The Sun.

“Anastasia was in my arms or in her carrier for many hours. My arms were tired. She had to stretch. And I had to communicate with all the family members who were wondering where the hell we were.”

The pediatric nurse said the viral photo made her the target of abuse from people who identified her by name and contacted her to call her a “bad mother.”

Ms. Lensing feared that the backlash would affect her job if her boss or a colleague found out, but fortunately there were no negative consequences.

When Ms. Lensing finally had the opportunity to tell her side of the story, she said the image still haunts her.

“To all the millennial moms who have been shamed for being normal!” she wrote on her Facebook page last week.

The mother of three said she strives to be the best mother she can be and knows deep down that she is raising her girls the best she can.