Sharenting, digital parenting processes, and children’s problematic internet use: A cross-sectional study

Berke Taşçı; Bedia Sultan Önal

doi:10.29329/jsomer.100

Authors

Berke Taşçı Ankara University, Institute of Forensic Sciences, Türkiye https://orcid.org/0009-0001-5431-8247
Bedia Sultan Önal Giresun University, Faculty of Medicine, Türkiye

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29329/jsomer.100

Abstract

The rapid integration of digital technologies into family life has transformed parenting practices, particularly through the widespread phenomenon of sharenting. While sharenting has primarily been examined as a matter of privacy and digital ethics, its potential association with children’s problematic internet use (PIU) remains underexplored. Drawing upon social learning theory and a digital parenting ecology framework, the present cross-sectional study examined the associations among parental sharenting behaviors, digital parenting awareness, digital attitudes, and children’s PIU. Participants consisted of parents of children aged 6–12. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis, controlling for child age, gender, and daily screen time, was employed as the primary analytic strategy. The final model accounted for 43.4% of the variance in children’s PIU (R² = .434, Adjusted R² = .401). Digital parenting awareness, specifically the Protection from Risks and Role Modeling sub-dimensions, emerged as the strongest predictors. A counterintuitive positive direction for these awareness dimensions is interpreted within a reactive parenting framework, suggesting that heightened awareness may develop in response to already-emerging problematic behaviors. Among sharenting dimensions, Emotional Needs and Escape Needs emerged as significant positive predictors, whereas Cognitive–Emotional sharenting was a significant negative predictor, suggesting a tentative negative association that may reflect more reflective and relationally oriented digital sharing practices; however, this preliminary finding requires cautious interpretation, as it may partly reflect statistical suppression arising from intercorrelations among sharenting sub-dimensions. Parental digital attitudes contributed incrementally but were attenuated in the final model. These findings advance the literature by integrating sharenting into the behavioral addiction framework through a hierarchical, multi-dimensional digital parenting ecology model.

References

Ammari, T., Kumar, P., Lampe, C., & Schoenebeck, S. (2015, April). Managing children's online identities: How parents decide what to disclose about their children online. In Proceedings of the 33rd annual ACM conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 1895-1904). https://doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702325

Anderson, E. L., Steen, E., & Stavropoulos, V. (2017). Internet use and problematic internet use: A systematic review of longitudinal research trends in adolescence and emergent adulthood. International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 22(4), 430–454. https://doi.org/10.1080/02673843.2016.1227716

Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory (Vol. 1, pp. 33-52). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-hall.

Blum-Ross, A., & Livingstone, S. (2017). “Sharenting”, parent blogging, and the boundaries of the digital self. Popular Communication, 15(2), 110–125. https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2016.1223300

Brosch, A. (2016). When the child is born into the Internet: Sharenting as a growing trend among parents on Facebook. The new educational Review, 43, 225-235. https://doi.org/10.15804/tner.2016.43.1.19

Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Harvard university press.

Chassiakos, Y. L., Radesky, J., Christakis, D., Moreno, M. A., & Cross, C. (2016). Children and adolescents and digital media. Pediatrics, 138(5), e20162593. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2016-2593

Chen, Y.-L., & Gau, S. S. F. (2016). Sleep problems and internet addiction among children and adolescents: A longitudinal study. Journal of Sleep Research, 25(4), 458–465. https://doi.org/10.1111/jsr.12388

Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203771587

C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital. (2015). Parents on social media: Likes and dislikes of sharenting. Mott Poll Report. https://mottpoll.org/reports-surveys/parents-social-media-likes-and-dislikes-sharenting

Duerager, Andrea, Livingstone, Sonia (2012) How can parents support children’s internet safety? Technical Report. EU Kids Online, The London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK. Available at: https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/42872

Erden, Ş., Elmalı Özsaray, A., & Deniz, K. Z. (2022). Adolescents’ Internet Addiction, Cyber Bullying, and Cyber Victimization in Terms of Various Variables. Addicta: The Turkish Journal on Addictions, 9(3), 311-319. https://doi.org/10.5152/ADDICTA.2022.22037

Field, A. (2024). Discovering statistics using IBM SPSS Statistics. Sage Publications Limited.

Hair, J. F., Black, W. C., Babin, B. J., & Anderson, R. E. (2014). Exploratory factor analysis. Multivariate data analysis (7th ed.). Pearson.

Hiniker, A., Schoenebeck, S. Y., & Kientz, J. A. (2016, February). Not at the dinner table: Parents' and children's perspectives on family technology rules. In Proceedings of the 19th ACM conference on computer-supported cooperative work & social computing (pp. 1376-1389). https://doi.org/10.1145/2818048.2819940

İnan Kaya, G., Mutlu Bayraktar, D., & Yılmaz, Ö. (2018). Dijital ebeveynlik tutum ölçeği: Geçerlik ve güvenirlik çalışması [Digital Parenting Attitude Scale: Validity and reliability study]. Mehmet Akif Ersoy University Journal of Education Faculty, 46, 149–173. https://doi.org/10.21764/maeuefd.390626

Kopecky, K., Szotkowski, R., Aznar-Díaz, I., & Romero-Rodríguez, J. M. (2020). The phenomenon of sharenting and its risks in the online environment. Experiences from Czech Republic and Spain. Children and youth services review, 110, 104812. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.104812

Kopuz, T. (2021). Ebeveynlerin dijital dünyada paylaşımları: Sharenting [Parents’ sharing in the digital world: Sharenting] (Tez No. 681658) [Yüksek lisans tezi, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Üniversitesi]. Ulusal Tez Merkezi.

Kumar, P., & Schoenebeck, S. (2015, February). The modern day baby book: Enacting good mothering and stewarding privacy on Facebook. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM conference on computer supported cooperative work & social computing (pp. 1302-1312). https://doi.org/10.1145/2675133.2675149

Kuss, D. J., Griffiths, M. D., Karila, L., & Billieux, J. (2014). Internet addiction: A systematic review of epidemiological research for the last decade. Current Pharmaceutical Design, 20(25), 4026–4052. https://doi.org/10.2174/13816128113199990617

Kutlu, M., Savcı, M., Demir, Y., & Aysan, F. (2016). Young internet bağımlılığı testi kısa formunun Türkçe uyarlaması: Üniversite öğrencileri ve ergenlerde geçerlilik ve güvenilirlik çalışması [Turkish adaptation of the Young Internet Addiction Test-Short Form: Validity and reliability study among university students and adolescents]. Anadolu Psikiyatri Dergisi, 17(Ek 1), 69–76. https://doi.org/10.5455/apd.190501

Lauricella, A. R., Wartella, E., & Rideout, V. J. (2015). Young children’s screen time: The complex role of parent and child factors. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 36, 11–17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2014.12.001

Livingstone, S., & Helsper, E. J. (2008). Parental mediation of children’s internet use. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 52(4), 581–599. https://doi.org/10.1080/08838150802437396

Livingstone, S., Davidson, J., Bryce, J., Batool, S., Haughton, C., & Nandi, A. (2017). Children's online activities, risks and safety: a literature review by the UKCCIS evidence group. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/childrens-online-activities-risks-and-safety-a-literature-review-by-the-ukccis-evidence-group

Manap, A., & Durmuş, E. (2020). Dijital ebeveynlik farkındalık ölçeğinin geliştirilmesi [Development of the Digital Parenting Awareness Scale]. İnönü University Journal of the Faculty of Education, 21(2), 978–993. https://doi.org/10.17679/inuefd.711101

Ouvrein, G., & Verswijvel, K. (2019). Sharenting: Parental adoration or public humiliation? A focus group study on adolescents' experiences with sharenting against the background of their own impression management. Children and Youth Services Review, 99, 319-327. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2019.02.011

Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., Lee, J. Y., & Podsakoff, N. P. (2003). Common method biases in behavioral research: a critical review of the literature and recommended remedies. Journal of applied psychology, 88(5), 879. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.88.5.879

Shin, W., & Lwin, M. O. (2017). How does “talking about the Internet with others” affect teenagers’ experience of online risks? The role of active mediation by parents, peers, and school teachers. New media & society, 19(7), 1109-1126. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444815626612

Steinberg, S. B. (2017). Sharenting: Children's privacy in the age of social media. Emory Law Journal, 66(4), 839–884.

Available at: https://scholarlycommons.law.emory.edu/elj/vol66/iss4/2

Tabachnick, B. G., & Fidell, L. S. (2013). Using multivariate statistics. Pearson.

Tosuntaş, Ş. B., & Griffiths, M. D. (2024). Sharenting: A systematic review of the empirical literature. Journal of Family Theory & Review, 16(3), 525–562. https://doi.org/10.1111/jftr.12566

Tural Büyük, E., Uzsen, H., & Koyun, M. (2022). Family attitudes toward the use of technological devices by children during COVID-19. Addicta: The Turkish Journal on Addictions, 9(2), 189–195. https://doi.org/10.5152/ADDICTA.2022.21115

Young, K. S. (1998). Internet Addiction: The Emergence of a New Clinical Disorder. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 1(3), 237-244. https://doi.org/10.1089/cpb.1998.1.237

Zulfiqar, N., & Khan, S. (2024). Perceived parenting styles and internet addiction among Pakistani university students: Age and gender differences. Addicta: The Turkish Journal on Addictions, 11(1), 69–76. https://doi.org/10.5152/ADDICTA.2024.23083