Smart Devices, Smart Decisions? Implications of Parents’ Sharenting for Children’s Online Privacy: An Investigation of Mothers

Abstract

Parenthood ushers in many situations with which individuals have little experience. Given today’s technology-integrated environment, parents can instantly gain support from a large audience using social media. This support often includes “sharenting,” or regularly using social media to share information about one’s child. Using consumer vulnerability and communications privacy management theory as theoretical foundations, the authors focus on mothers’ vulnerability and how it may translate into increased children’s consumer vulnerability. The in-depth interviews in Study 1 offer insights into mothers’ expressions of vulnerability and how these expressions can be linked to their motivations for sharing children’s personally identifiable information (PII) on social media. In Study 2, the authors observed mothers of young children participating in a Twitter chat hosted by a major children’s brand, examining expressions of mothers’ vulnerability, the extent to which they posted child PII, and the extent to which mothers both expressed vulnerability and posted child PII. The authors discuss public policy and managerial implications for this understudied dimension of children’s online privacy and our increasingly technology-integrated society.