AUTHOR=Walrave Michel , Robbé Sofie , Staes Luna , Hallam Lara 

TITLE=Mindful sharenting: how millennial parents balance between sharing and protecting

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 14 - 2023

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1171611

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1171611

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=Sharenting, parents' sharing of personal information about their children on social media, is becoming increasingly controversial. Its potential risks have drawn some parents to engage in mindful sharenting: parents' application of strategies to reduce the potentially negative effects of sharenting, as they are aware of the impact sharenting can have on the child's privacy. This study investigates parents' motives for engaging in mindful sharenting, the strategies they implement and how relatives and acquaintances react. In-depth interviews were conducted with eight mother-father dyads in Belgium. Both respondents had to be born between 1980-2000 (i.e., millennial parents), and having a child aged between zero and six years. The reasons leading parents to engage in mindful sharenting were previous negative experiences they encountered or heard of from acquaintances. In addition, parents aimed to safeguard their child's privacy and prevent any misuse of their identity or any other forms of aggression. Furthermore, certain parents wish to grant their children the freedom to choose which media content about them is shared online at a later stage in life. All interviewed couples declared they made the decision to engage in mindful sharenting before the child was born. As parents are also aware of potential benefits of sharenting, they employ strategies to ensure their child's privacy, while still enjoying the benefits sharenting offers them. These strategies include photographing the child from a distance, the child looking away from the camera, focusing only on a body part, covering the face with an emoticon, blurring the face, or cutting recognizable parts from the photo. However, parents engaging in mindful sharenting are also confronted with questions and negative comments from family members and acquaintances. This makes them feel like they must justify their decision. Moreover, some parents have to deal with family members posting identifiable pictures of their child, which leads to privacy turbulence, and parents having to clarify and renegotiate the privacy boundaries concerning image sharing.