How social media is affecting parenting

Tuesday, July 14th, 2015

I was browsing my Facebook feed, enjoying pictures of my friends’ kids, dogs, and vacations. And that’s when I saw it: a close-up picture of a child’s portable potty.

The pint-size throne was bright red, plastic, and – how to put this delicately? – filled with tangible results.

“First time in the potty!” crowed the caption, written by the proud mother.

The picture generated scores of thumbs up, and several comments.

“Woot woot!”

“Such a relief for Mom!” – celebrating this magical moment of which we were now all a part, whether we liked it or not.

And magical it might be; potty training is no small feat, as I’m learning myself these days.

Yet no one said what I was thinking, and what others surely were thinking, which was “Seriously? Did you really just post that?”

Families used to be like Las Vegas – what happened at home, stayed at home.

For better or worse, previous generations of parents, and especially mothers, were expected to stay mum about their lives and sum up their daily frustrations with a smile and an “Everything is fine!”

We modern-day parents, however, live in a world of updates and uploads on the minutiae of child rearing for a cast of hundreds, sometimes thousands, which includes everyone from close friends to coworkers to people we’ve met just once or twice, or not at all.

Not surprisingly, many parents think all this sharing has gotten a little out of hand.

In an exclusive Parents survey of more than 2,000 respondents, 79 percent said other parents overshare on social media – yet only 32 percent of us think we overshare ourselves. Hmm.

Of course, what’s too much information (TMI) in one parent’s eyes may not be to another’s.

For example, 65 percent of parents think posting a picture of a kid in her underwear is not okay to post, which leaves room for plenty who think it’s no big deal (NBD).

What’s more, we’re only beginning to learn how this “oversharenting” might be affecting kids.

This is the first generation to be born into the like-happy world of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. And it’s hard not to notice that children as young as 3 or 4 have become strangely adept at posing. Continue reading