Share with care: negotiating children’s health and safety in sharenting practices

Abstract

Sharenting – a new term emerged over the past 10 years – refers to the practice of sharing textual and audiovisual contents concerning children online by their parents or guardians, potentially impacting the construction of children’s digital identity before they can reach the age of consent. Based on a passive virtual ethnography carried out comparatively in Italian-speaking and English-speaking virtual communities focusing on children’s wellbeing and health, this paper offers an empirical contribution to the study of sharenting. While contributing to the wider debates on the practices and discourses about sharing in digital media, this paper provides an analysis of how online and offline parenting cultures affect sharenting practices; how the consequences of sharenting are addressed in online communities; and how the privacy vs openness tension about sharing contents is negotiated by parents with regards to their own and children needs even in terms of digital security.