Privacy-protective behaviors in the mediatized domestic milieu: parents and the intra- and extra-systemic governance of children’s digital traces

Abstract

This paper reports on findings from a survey administered to a sample of 290 parents of children aged 0-12 living in the United States, focusing on parents’ intra- and extra-systemic governance strategies adopted to steward their children’s privacy online when adults post about them on social media, here intended as a proxy for social media literacy. Intra-systemic strategies are aimed at controlling parents’ own sharing behavior when sharing about their children; extra-systemic strategies the behavior of people from surrounding systems (i.e., relatives). Based on descriptive statistics and results of a series of logistic regressions, this work reports on factors influencing the adoption of privacy-protective behaviors for digital-footprint management in the mediatized domestic milieu and advances considerations to promote educational and social media literacy interventions for parents.

Keywords

• sharenting
• digital parenting
• children's social media presence
• social media literacy
• online privacy