A study of 10 British motherhood influencers suggests they often deliberately share pictures of their children on Instagram, with strong trust in the safety of doing so. Katherine Baxter of Liverpool Hope University, U.K., and Barbara Czarnecka of London South Bank University, U.K., present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on January 15, 2025.
With the rise of social media influencers, the popularity of many who engage in sharing images of their children—"sharenting"—has raised concerns about whether such actions compromise children's privacy rights. Sharenting has been linked with a number of potential harms for children, such as future psychological impacts, bullying, and personal information being accessible to pedophiles.
However, little is known about the extent to which sharenting occurs, and most studies of motherhood influencers have relied on surveys about their posting habits without examining actual posting practices. To address that gap, Baxter and Czarnecka surveyed 10 British motherhood influencers, each with more than 10,000 Instagram followers, and analyzed 5,253 of their posts made between August 2020 and July 2021.
Over 75 percent of the posts featured children, and of those, 46.4 percent included sponsorships and product advertisements, suggesting that images of kids are often used for financial gain. Posts featuring children with images or text containing embarrassing, intimate, or revealing information were relatively rare, at 11.5 percent. Notably, whether a post featured children or not was unrelated to the number of "likes" it received.
Prior research has suggested the existence of a "privacy paradox," where people's stated concerns about online privacy do not align with their posting behavior. In this study, participants tended to express strong trust in the safety of posting on Instagram and reported they were either indifferent to or willing to engage in sharenting, suggesting they may deliberately post their kids' pictures. This apparent lack of concern does not support the privacy paradox.
The researchers note that larger studies will be needed to confirm their findings and deepen understanding. Meanwhile, they call for new legislation to protect children online, such as, for instance, a ban on sharenting or automatic blocking of children's images on social media.
The authors add: "Motherhood influencers shared images of their children in over 75% of the 5,253 posts analyzed, with only 11.5% containing embarrassing, intimate, or revealing content. These influencers expressed strong trust in online safety on Instagram and showed indifference or willingness toward sharenting, indicating that sharing images of their children may be a deliberate strategy rather than an accidental act."
In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS One: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0314472
