Guilty of Sharenting? You're Not Alone

by ParentCo. January 12, 2016

New parents love social media, especially on mobile devices. They (we) use it for entertainment, to keep up with friends and family, to shop, and for research.

New parents use social media pretty much for everything. Pretty much like everyone else. One difference, however, is the frequency that new parents post to social media. A fascinating study from Ipsos MediaCT and highlighted by Adweek reveals that, compared to non-parents:

• New moms post 2.5x more status updates.
• New moms post 3.5x more photos.
• New moms post 4.2x more videos.
• And new parents use Facebook mobile 1.3x more often than non-parents.

It's completely understandable why new parents post so many photos and videos of their babies. The average parent will post almost 1,000 photos of their child online before he/she turns five. Sharenting: used to describe the overuse of social media by parents to share content based on their children. "Oversharenting" or not, social media is an easy way to share with friends and family. There's the pride and joy factor. Parents use social media to share their kids’ milestones. And then there are ALL THE LIKES.

• New parents’ Facebook posts about babies get 37% more interactions from relatives.
• New parents’ Facebook posts about babies get 47% more interactions from friends than their general posts.

This brings to mind "Moments That Matter - Finding the Extraordinary in the Ordinary," an October 2015 study of consumer sharing behavior from Facebook IQ. Their findings can be summed up as "parenthood is mobilehood." Insights from their study:

• Baby feeding time is mobile time.
• New parents are active on Facebook super early in the morning, starting as early as 4am and peaking at 7am.
• By 7am, 56% of new parents on mobile have visited Facebook for their first mobile session of the day.
• Comparatively, 45% of non-parents have logged into Facebook by 7am.
• According to Facebook IQ, new moms post status updates 2.6x more, share photos 2.9x more and share videos 5x more than non-moms typically post and share.
• New moms ages 18–34 post status updates 2.6x more, share photos 3x more and share videos 5.5x more than non-moms of the same age typically post and share.

Here at Parent Co, we're intensely interested in how parents use social media. After all, we make Notabli, an app that allows parents to save and share their kids' moments in private social networks of friends and family. We've seen the upsides and downsides of sharing kids' photos on social media. It's easy and appealing in the moment (and many of us here do it.) However, there are serious concerns to oversharing kid and baby photos on public social networks.

• Facebook’s can use images and names of your minor kids in Facebook ads - without your permission
• Social media is a terrible place to archive high res images.
• Images are stored at a lower resolution and media isn't clearly organized.
• Media files aren't ever truly private.

Still, there's no doubt that "parenting is becoming a digitally shared experience."

More Reading

• How I Made Better Rules For Posting Photos of My Kid Online
• Moments That Matter Finding the Extraordinary in the Ordinary
• Cracked – Yes, Cracked – Has Good Parenting Advice About Over Sharing On Social Media
• Parents on Social Media Pew Research Findings
• Talking social media dos and don’ts for grownups and kids with VPR

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