Sharenting: A Review on Parental Behaviors on Social Media

Social media is a commonly used tool for different purposes such as socialization, obtaining information or meeting with new people. It is known that parents often use social media. “Sharenting” is defined as parents’ sharing their children’s photos, videos, or different information online. Parents share their children with different purposes including sharing information, expressing themselves, helping each other or socialization, however it might have negative consequences in terms of children’s privacy. This review discusses about sharenting behaviors’ prevalence, possible reasons and results, risks for children, and perspectives of parents and children on this topic and it is important in terms of including all previous studies on this particular subject. Considering previous results, precautions including privacy settings, amount of sharing or not including children in these sharenting behavior are discussed in terms of protecting children’s privacy. In addition, it is emphasized that future cross-sectional /longitudinal and intervention studies with different parent groups are needed.