A new poll from the University of Michigan (U-M) reports that more than half of moms and one-third of dads turn to social media such as Facebook to discuss child health and parenting issues. the poll also found that nearly three-quarters of the same parents say they know someone who “overshares,” posting embarrassing information about their child, inappropriate photos, or information that could be used to identify a child’s location.
“Sharing the joys and challenges of parenthood and documenting children’s lives publically has become a social norm so we wanted to better understand the benefits and cons of these experiences,” Sarah J. Clark, MPH, associate director of the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health and associate research scientist in the U-M department of pediatrics, said in a news release.
“On one hand, social media offers today’s parents an outlet they find incredibly useful. On the other hand, some are concerned that oversharing may pose safety and privacy risks for their kids,” added Clark.
Clark and her colleagues polled 569 parents of children ages zero to four about the benefits and concerns they had about sharing parenting information on social media. Nearly 70 percent of the respondents said they use social media to get advice from other more experienced parents on such topics as getting kids to sleep (28 percent), eating and nutrition (26 percent), discipline (19 percent), school behavior (17 percent) and behavioral problems (13 percent). Among the group, 72 percent said it made them feel less alone and 62 percent said it helped them worry less.
“The biggest thing is feeling like you’re not alone – whether it’s 2 o’clock in the morning and [you’re wondering] ‘Who else is up?’ or ‘My kid won’t eat anything that’s orange,’ and ‘My kid has a weird rash,’” Clark told the Detroit Free Press.
However, poll respondents also recognized the pitfalls of sharing information and photos of their children online, with 68 percent expressing worries about someone learning too much information about their children or “digitally kidnapping” their kids’ photos by copying them and re-sharing them as if the children were their own. Another 52 percent were concerned that their children would be embarrassed when they got older.
And it’s not just privacy and security that are at issue. There have been cases where children’s photos have been the target of ridicule and cyberbullying. There are also several websites that collect baby pictures for the sole purpose of making derogatory remarks about them
So what is appropriate to share and what is not? Social media consultant Christopher Barger says the litmus test for determining if a topic is appropriate is whether or not you would talk about it at work. If it is a concern about a strange rash, he told the Detroit Free Press, feedback from other parents around the water cooler is appropriate. If it’s what to do because your son is downloading pornography, that’s over the line, he said.
And let’s not forget that what appears on the Internet stays on the Internet. What you put online about your children becomes part of their history, and there is technology out there that can absorb your child’s information and image into a variety of databases over which you have no control.
The bottom line is that parents have a responsibility to show good judgement when posting about their kids. “Parents are responsible for their child’s privacy and need to be thoughtful about how much they share on social media so they can enjoy the benefits and camaraderie but also protect their children’s privacy today and in the future,” said Clark in the news release.
