DIGITAL PARENTING: WHY SINGAPOREAN MILLENNIALS PARENTS PERFORM OR AVOID SHARENTING ON INSTAGRAM

Abstract

With the advent of camera phones and social media platforms, parents sharing content about their children or parenting online continues to grow in popularity. This phenomenon is known as sharenting (derived from share and parenting), leading to a vast number of pictures and videos of children online, especially on visual contentsharing platforms like Instagram. Guided by the Uses and Gratifications theory, this study examined Singaporean millennial parents’motivations for performing or avoiding sharenting on Instagram and provided fundamental reasons behind such behaviors. Features used by millennials when sharenting on Instagram were also identified. In-depth interviews were conducted with 20 Singaporean millennials parents (aged from 27 to 39 years old), where 10 performed sharenting (5 males, 5 females) and 10 avoided sharenting (5 males, 5 females) on Instagram. Results indicated that sharenting on Instagram enables parents to store memories to indulge in reminiscence, update family and friends, exchange parenting-related information, and receive social support from a community of parents. For parents who avoided sharenting Instagram, their motivations included safeguarding from uncontrollable external risks, personal values of privacy, respecting their child’s autonomy, fear of judgment, avoid evoking negative emotions from others, and negativity of social comparison. Theoretical and practical implications of this study were also discussed.