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

Abstract

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.