Sharenting: Parental adoration or public humiliation? A focus group study on adolescents' experiences with sharenting against the background of their own impression management

Gaëlle Ouvrein and Karen Verswijvel

Children and Youth Services Review, 2019, vol. 99, issue C, 319-327

Abstract: Parents share posts and pictures about their children on social network sites (SNSs), a practice referred to as sharenting. Whereas existing research mostly covered parents' perspective on sharenting, this study investigated adolescents' perceptions of and experiences with sharenting against the background of their own impression management. A focus group study was conducted among 46 adolescents from 12 to 14 years old. The results indicated that although adolescents seem to generally approve sharenting and most of the adolescents show trust in their parents, the practice seems to lead to some frustrations now and then. Adolescents described some contradictions between the image they are trying to construct online and the posts of their parents, which might create embarrassing situations. In order to avoid conflicts, adolescents indicated that parents should respect a couple of boundaries, concerning what types of posts can be shared, how often and with whom. Moreover, they should ask permission before actually posting about their children.

Keywords: Sharenting; Impression management; Adolescence; Identity development; Social network sites (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190740918309952
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:99:y:2019:i:c:p:319-327

DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2019.02.011

Access Statistics for this article

Children and Youth Services Review is currently edited by Duncan Lindsey

More articles in Children and Youth Services Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().