The Privacy Paradox by Proxy: Considering Predictors of Sharenting

The New Educational Review

This paper presents a theoretical analysis of the concept of sharenting, emphasizing its role in violating children's privacy. Mechanisms of online self-disclosure are also analyzed, especially regarding parents' activities consisting of posting information about their children online. Lack of legal regulations regarding the protection of children's privacy online was also pointed out. Finally, a model of sharenting was developed, which was the basis for establishing a framework of the conceptualization of a research project on sharenting.

Frontiers in Education, 2022

Parents sharing information about their children on social network sites (SNSs) (i.e., sharenting) is common today. However, previous work confronting parents’ and adolescents’ views on sharenting and related privacy concerns is limited. Therefore, the present study scrutinizes parents’ motives for sharenting and adolescents’ attitudes toward sharenting and negotiated privacy management strategies. Communication Privacy Management (CPM) was used as a theoretical framework. Based on 30 semi-structured interviews, two motives for sharenting were identified. Parents share information about their adolescent children because they are proud of their offspring or to inform family and friends. In turn, adolescents’ approval of their parents’ sharenting behavior depends on the content parents disclose online. Adolescents perceive sharenting as positive as long as they are nicely portrayed and positive events are shared. Additionally, both adolescents and parents are concerned about the child...

Scientia

On social media, parents are increasingly posting photographs, videos, and status updates containing private information about their children. This action is known as sharenting. Digital native parents who have raised their children in first-generation digital societies commonly partake in this pastime. However, distributing content on a regular basis hurts kids' interests. This essay's goals are to assess sharenting offences and highlight how important it is to protect children from sharenting's dangers. A review of the literature served as the study's methodology. The results demonstrate that the three stages of reality construction are represented by the six steps of the sharing process: (1) documentation, (2) choosing, (3) editing, (4) giving captions, (5) uploading, and (6) getting responses. Sharing behaviour has the potential to expose children's identities in a public way on social media, has a tendency to violate children's privacy, and even appears ...

Proceedings of the ACM on human-computer interaction, 2022

Parents posting photos and other information about children on social media is increasingly common and a recent source of controversy. We investigated characteristics that predict parental sharing behavior by collecting information from 493 parents of young children in the United States on self-reported demographics, social media activity, parenting styles, children's social media engagement, and parental sharing attitudes and behaviors. Our findings indicate that most social media active parents share photos of their children online and feel comfortable doing so without their child's permission. The strongest predictor of parental sharing frequency was general social media posting frequency, suggesting that participants do not strongly differentiate between "regular" photo-sharing activities and parental sharing. Predictors of parental sharing frequency include greater social media engagement, larger social networks with norms encouraging parental sharing, more permissive and confident parenting styles, and greater social media engagement by their children. Contrasting previous research that often highlights benefits of parental sharing, our findings point to a number of risky online behaviors associated with parental sharing not previously uncovered. Implications for children's privacy and early social media exposure are discussed, including future directions for influencing parental sharing attitudes and behaviors. CCS Concepts: • Security and privacy; Human and societal aspects of security and privacy; Social aspects of security and privacy • Human-centered computing; Human computer interaction (HCI); HCI design and evaluation methods; User studies • Social and professional topics; User characteristics; Age; Children

Social Media + Society, 2020

Parental sharing of child-related content on social network sites, termed “sharenting,” is often the target of criticism. Yet, through sharenting, parents can find support systems, a way to stay in touch with relevant others, and even an opportunity for additional income. This study contributes to knowledge on antecedents of sharenting. It explores the impact of parents’ privacy concerns on the sharing of child-related content, as well as on their general Instagram sharing. In this study, we differentiate between general and situational privacy. Moreover, we investigate whether parents’ privacy self-efficacy and the support of their peers influence parental sharing practices. Drawing on a rich body of literature on privacy and information sharing, we discuss the results of an online survey distributed among 320 Instagram users who are parents of children younger than 13 and reside in the United Kingdom. We find that parents’ privacy concerns are uncorrelated to sharenting and only situational concerns marginally correlate to parents’ general sharing. Parents’ reported privacy self-efficacy also did not play a role in parents’ sharing of either personal or children-related content. On the contrary, both Instagram sharing and having a network supportive of parental sharenting positively predict sharenting. Our results indicate that (a) neither situational nor general privacy concerns influence parents’ sharenting behavior, and (b) a parent’s supportive network and frequent sharing habits make frequent sharenting more likely.

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), 2023

In the last few years, there has been a significant increase in smartphone usage among children. Within this topic one development stands out: children are having their first phone at a younger age. It is important for smartphone users to realize what kind of information is on their phone and what possible risk they face when the data becomes accessible to external threats. This research looks into how privacy aware childrens are between the age of seven and twelve of the privacy risks related to smartphone usage, and what influence parental mediation has to the privacy awareness. This paper will focus on two of the most significant risks related to smartphones and children, 1) Data consent , 2) Data Legitimacy. The insights of this paper indicate that children between the age of seven and twelve have insufficient knowledge about these risks.

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

The New Educational Review

Parents actively share information about their children on Facebook, but little research has explored the extent of this issue. The goal of this paper is to theorize a new type of parents' online activities concerning their children, especially the problem of sharenting, which is increasingly common in contexts where social media such as Facebook play a significant role in relationships and interactions. This paper explores what kind of baby pictures parents share on Facebook and what are the likely causes of doing it. The presented research was conducted with the use of social media ethnography among 168 Polish parents using Facebook. The findings have shown that the phenomenon of sharenting is common practice among parents.

Among social media users, parents constitute an active part and they have brought in a new concept, which is called 'sharenting' in literature. This study aimed at obtaining the usage frequency and the content of social media sharing, and investigating the information a group of parents shared online about their children, via content analysis. The researchers administered an online survey on the usage of Facebook on 219 parents, whom the researchers had already connected with on Facebook. The parents were also asked for permission to view their Facebook profiles. 94 parents gave permissions and their profiles were investigated in terms of sharenting for the months of February, April, and June 2015 (for these 3 months only). Information shared online by parents, show a wide range of variety and diversity. There is also a reflection of social media on sharenting. In terms of content share results, parents need to be aware of the information they share online regarding their children.

The Daily Star, 2023

What parents usually share online about their children builds a data structure with which the latter may not be happy once they grow up. When we share information on social media platforms, we are conscious of the fact that their owners may use it for commercial purposes. But underage children whose information their parents share on various sites are not aware of these commercial motives. Nor do they understand that owners of social media affordances are involved in data profiling and data trading. Perhaps there are (and/or will be) so many other pitfalls and (privacy) loopholes in social media use, about which we know hardly anything.