Earlier this year, our Rose Capdevila, Lisa Lazard, Sandra Roper, and others published a piece over on The Conversation about sharenting – the practice of sharing images of your kids online.
On Mother’s Day, social media feeds are often full of celebration. Facebook reported that in 2017, Mother’s Day “drove more posts in a single day than any other topic on Facebook in the last year”. For some countries, Facebook even created a temporary emoji – the purple flower– so people could fully express their gratitude for their mothers online.
Every other day, alongside pictures of cats and food, many mothers take to social media with photos and status updates celebrating the lives of their children. The term “sharenting” neatly captures this activity. These posts can be seen as moments of pride, but there has been criticism of the frequency of these parental status updates.
While parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles share images online, research shows it is mothers who post more information about their children on social media – particularly when it comes to family photos. It’s also mothers who are largely the focus of disapproval and judgement for their sharenting. Read more…