‘Take it down!’: Estonian parents’ and pre-teens’ opinions and experiences with sharenting

Semi-structured individual interviews with 14 Estonian mothers and their children (aged 9–13 years) pairs who had ‘friended’ each other on Facebook were carried out to study pre-teens’ and parents’ reflections and experiences regarding information disclosures and sharenting on Facebook. We wanted to know what kind of information mothers shared about their children on Facebook and how the children perceived and reacted to such posts. Our findings indicated that there was a major discrepancy in the parents’ and children’s views about whether a parent should ask for permission to upload child-related content on social media. Pre-teens were often frustrated by their mothers’ sharenting practices, which led to privacy boundary turbulence between parents and the children. Raising the awareness of parents is crucial as children not only feel a need to negotiate the terms of acceptable information sharing with their parents but also expect their parents to respect their views on the topic.

"Interviews with Estonian pre-teens and their mothers revealed that sharenting has become a ubiquitous part of the present-day parenting experience for many parents." (Lipu & Siibak, 2019, p. 64). "The majority of mothers in our sample felt quite comfortable with sharing photos and information about their children on SNS and were not very concerned about the potential of introducing new risks to their children’s identities and privacy." (Lipu & Siibak, 2019, p. 64). "Pre-teens in our sample were often frustrated by their mothers’ sharenting practices and engaged in active boundary co-ordination efforts (Petronio, 2002) in the hopes of co-managing their online identities." (Lipu & Siibak, 2019, p. 65). "Results indicate that there was a great discrepancy between the parents’ and children’s views about whether a parent should ask for permission to upload child-related content on SNS." (Lipu & Siibak, 2019, p. 65). "In fact, the lack of such unified family privacy rules that applied equally to all of the members of the family could be a potential reason for the occurrence of privacy boundary turbulence (Petronio, 2010) that could in turn cause stress in the child–parent relationship." (Lipu & Siibak, 2019, p. 65).