Millie the Doula
This is more reasearch done for my degree, with sources. Don't hesitate to get in touch for more information, to get this information in a different format, or simply to find out more!
Socialisation
How parents choose to socialise their child
Parenting styles adopted can have a great effect on how young people navigate social media. Parents themselves have their own way of navigating social media when it comes to their children. It was found that parents show their children on social media from the moment they disclose their pregnancy to their social networks. This can limit the child’s autonomy over their digital footprint when they’re able to make their own decisions on this (Leaver, 2017, p2). Parents share all types of information about their child – such as their school, birth date, illnesses or images – which can be accessed by anyone that has viewed their social media profiles, as well as big corporations that have access to the data – including third party corporations and hackers (ibid, p3). Parents can often feel emotionally pressured by friends and family who can view their profiles into sharing this content, and therefore will share about their offspring from pregnancy (ibid, p4). The rise of micro-influencers with marketable opportunities has led to some children growing up with their own social media profile, full of personal information and supposed interests, which the child may not always live up to (ibid, p8-9). It is understood that whilst this can sometimes bring a benefit to children, it is a double-edged sword, as stated in Current Sociology; “parents are encouraged to both protect children and invest in their future – and internet-connected technologies are topicalised as both the solution and the problem” (Mascheroni, 2020, p805). This study leads to my research of older adolescents being needed as the effects of this over-exposure are relatively unknown.
This was echoed by ÅžimÅŸek and Ünal who researched parents’ use of social media, finding that two thirds of parents post about their children online (ÅžimÅŸek and Ünal, 2020, p1480). Often those that did share, did so in order to bond with relatives and friends, whilst those who did not were concerned about paedophiles and the effects that their sharing may have on their child’s future (ibid, p1481). Two thirds of those who did share about their child did not gain consent from the child, citing reasons such as their age or their lack of understanding about social media (ibid, p1482) – this exemplifies the fact that parents were taking away their child’s autonomy at a stage where they would not get control about anything of this nature.
Leaver, T. (2017) Intimate surveillance: Normalizing parental monitoring and mediation of infants online. Social media+ society, 3(2), p.2056305117707192.
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Mascheroni, G. (2020) Datafied childhoods: contextualising datafication in everyday life. Current Sociology, 68(6), pp.798-813.
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ÅžimÅŸek, E.E. and Ünal, F. (2020) Opinions of parents on social media shares about children. Ilkogretim Online, 19(3).
Parents' navigation of children/young people's socialisation
There are two main styles of parents dealing with their children’s social media use: active – in which parents will have open communication about how their child uses social media; or restrictive – where parents implement rules, regulations, and limitations on how their child can use social media (Padilla-Walker et al, 2020, p182). Adolescent disclosure – where adolescents choose to share information with their parents – is prevalent in active parenting in which adolescents tell their parents what they do when their parents aren’t physically present, however when parents implement a restrictive style of parenting their adolescents will often lie or keep secrets due to the lack of autonomy they have within the family (ibid, p183). Adolescents who disclose to their parents have been recorded as having good academic achievement due to the communication with their parents, whilst those who kept secrets from their parents thought of this as a form of ownership where other forms may not be present in their lives (ibid, p184). Their offline behaviour was almost always informed by these parental controls on their social media uses, “media disclosure was correlated with more prosocial behaviour and less aggression, and media secrecy had the opposite pattern” (ibid, p189) – which shows that active parental methods led to better outcomes for their children. Adolescents who do disclose to their parents/guardians do so in cases of self-discovered risks, which means that these parents/guardians involved will have to give less help after an incident, as they have taken preventative action (Wisniewski et al, 2015, p302). This leads to the question of how adolescents navigate these online spaces and how do they view their parents/guardians from this behaviour.
Social media can be a large benefit to families – both sharing of beliefs and communication (Procentese, Gatti and Di Napoli, 2019, p2) which can be especially useful when the family is not in one location together. Whilst there was an understood obstacle normal family life made by social media – in that there was a physical distraction present as well as new and differing social norms brought by this new influential space (ibid, p3). When parents have a positive relationship with social media the family’s communication functioned well and was open (ibid, p8). Proper parental negotiation of social media can mean that risks and negative consequences present can be surpassed, whilst their adolescent’s minds can be broadened (ibid).
Padilla-Walker, L. M. et al. (2020) ‘Associations between parental media monitoring style, information management, and prosocial and aggressive behaviors’, Journal of Social & Personal Relationships, 37(1), pp. 180–200. doi: 10.1177/0265407519859653.
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Procentese, F., Gatti, F. and Di Napoli, I., (2019) Families and social media use: The role of parents’ perceptions about social media impact on family systems in the relationship between family collective efficacy and open communication. International journal of environmental research and public health, 16(24), p.5006.
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Wisniewski, P et al (2015) " Preventative" vs." Reactive" How Parental Mediation Influences Teens' Social Media Privacy Behaviors. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM conference on computer supported cooperative work & social computing (pp. 302-316).
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