Managing Children's Online Identities

Abstract

While extensive research has investigated the risks of children sharing their personal information online, little work has investigated the implications of parents sharing personal information about their children online. Drawing on 102 interviews with parents, we investigate how parents decide what to disclose about their children on social network sites (SNSs). We find that mothers take on the responsibility of sharing content about their children more than fathers do. Fathers are more restrictive about sharing to broad and professional audiences and are concerned about sharing content that could be perceived as sexually suggestive. Both mothers and fathers work to leverage affordances of SNSs to limit oversharing. Building on prior work, we introduce the concept of parental disclosure management, which describes how parents decide what to share about their children online. We also describe an emerging third shift of work that highlights the additional work parents take on to manage children's identities online. We conclude with theoretical and practical implications for designing SNSs to better support family life online.

Has Instagram Fundamentally Altered the 'Family Snapshot'?

“…Turning to research that specifically addresses the digital capture and online sharing of family images, we find studies that report the use of Flickr [1,53,80] and Facebook [1,5,43], but to-date very little in terms of Instagram [36]. Despite press and media coverage [41,56,75] of initiatives such as the UnBabyMe Facebook App, this research indicates that the sharing of family snapshots online seems generally well received.…”

“…Any criticism was limited to the technical aspects of composition and care was taken to avoid any implied criticism of the children involved. Even so, parents are aware that the audience may have a limited appetite for photographs of their children and take some steps to avoid 'oversharing', sometimes using the carefully managed privacy settings that Flickr offers [1].…”

“…The Facebook studies in this area reveal something of a paradox, as parents declare anxieties about sharing pictures of their children [1] and are also concerned about children's own sharing practices [81], yet parents, particularly mothers, remain very enthusiastic sharers of family photographs [52,68]. Of particular importance here is recent work that suggests the thematic manipulation of audience impression and perception of parenting ability appears synonymous with family snapshots across both print and online mediums.…”

“…In a timely response to these and other concerns, researchers in the HCI and CSCW communities have begun to examine the behaviours of parents when using technology and social media in relation to family photography e.g. [1,4,43]; our own work, reported here, builds on these foundations.…”

“…In contrast to other related work, e.g. [1,43], that has limited data collection approaches to parental self-reporting, our research seeks to contribute a data-driven perspective that utilizes qualitative visual analysis of snapshots posted to social media. Moreover, we pay close attention to long-standing existing literature from photography, communication and media studies that provides an extant, and thorough, understanding of historical attitudes and behaviours surrounding family snapshots [12,13,33,54,72].…”