‘Take it down!’: Estonian parents’ and pre-teens’ opinions and experiences with sharenting

Abstract

Semi-structured individual interviews with 14 Estonian mothers and their children (aged 9–13 years) pairs who had ‘friended’ each other on Facebook were carried out to study pre-teens’ and parents’ reflections and experiences regarding information disclosures and sharenting on Facebook. We wanted to know what kind of information mothers shared about their children on Facebook and how the children perceived and reacted to such posts. Our findings indicated that there was a major discrepancy in the parents’ and children’s views about whether a parent should ask for permission to upload child-related content on social media. Pre-teens were often frustrated by their mothers’ sharenting practices, which led to privacy boundary turbulence between parents and the children. Raising the awareness of parents is crucial as children not only feel a need to negotiate the terms of acceptable information sharing with their parents but also expect their parents to respect their views on the topic.

Sharenting, Peer Influence, and Privacy Concerns: A Study on the Instagram-Sharing Behaviors of Parents in the United Kingdom

“…However, such concerns prioritized children's physical privacy and safety (boyd & Hargittai, 2010;Symons et al, 2019), which highlights the complexity of the privacy stewardship role parents have as well as the possible gaps between perceived risks and actual sharing behaviors. The complex boundary management processes between parents and children when it comes to sharenting are described by Lipu and Siibak (2019), who interviewed 14 Estonian mothers and their 9-to 13-year-old children, using communication privacy management (CPM; Petronio, 2002) theory. Their findings revealed instances of privacy turbulence, similar to the one described in the Introduction between Gwyneth Paltrow and her daughter Apple Martin, and showed the intricacies of privacy stewardship in practice.…”

“…Several studies suggest that privacy risk considerations are frequently present when parents recount their sharenting practices (Chalklen & Anderson, 2017;Lipu & Siibak, 2019) to the point of hindering their children-related posting behavior (Ammari et al, 2015). Parents who engage in sharenting employ a series of practices to preserve their children's privacy.…”

“…Most research on sharenting has examined Facebook or social media more generally (Ammari et al, 2015;Autenrieth, 2018;Damkjaer, 2018;Lipu & Siibak, 2019). By contrast, less research has studied sharenting on Instagram and if has done so, it has looked at specific practices such as breastfeeding (Locatelli, 2017) and ultrasounds (Leaver & Highfield, 2018).…”

Elaborating Motive and Psychological Impact of Sharenting in Millennial Parents

“…The four types of communicative orientation characterize the parental approach to sharenting including the family-oriented approach, peer-oriented approach, opposition, and not using [28]. The results showed that the ten subjects in this research conducted sharenting that included a peer-oriented approach.…”

Balancing Privacy: Sharenting, Intimate Surveillance and the Right to Be Forgotten

“…As children grow older, parents transition from being the exclusive decision maker about sharing photos of their children online to a situation where children start exercising their voice and opinion about what should, and should not, be shared online. At times this can lead to 'boundary turbulence' in that the privacy expectations of children and their parents may not align, and difficult but important conversation can ensue (Lipu & Siibak, 2019). As children grow and usually start using their own social media accounts, their desire to shape their own identities and personality online can conflict with parental sharing, although in some contexts these conversations, too, can often be very productive with new boundaries and expectations emerging (Ouvrein & Verswijvel, 2019).…”