This book explores sharentingthe widespread practice of parents or caregivers sharing information about their children onlineand explores how this pervasive digital practice is reshaping childhood, parenting, and family life in a networked society.
Offering a transdisciplinary framework that integrates legal, sociological, psychological, and communication-based perspectives, the book examines sharenting from the micro-level of family life to the societal macro-level. It conceptualizes sharenting simultaneously as a communicative practice, a mode of identity construction, an evolving set of family rituals, a source of intergenerational conflict, and a regulatory challenge, among other dimensions. It also addresses emerging dynamics such as influencer parenting, datafication, childrens vulnerability as data subjects, and the growing risks associated with technologies that enable synthetic media, including deepfakes.
With contributors from Central-Eastern Europe, the Baltic States, Türkiye, and the Global South alongside Western scholars, the volume provides a rare comparative view of the interaction between global platforms and locally situated forms of parenting and governance. The book will appeal to scholars and students interested in parenting in the digital world from a range of disciplines: sociology, media studies, psychology, law, socio-legal studies, communication studies, childhood and youth studies, and family studies.
I. From Practice to Behavior;
1. Sharenting as a multifaceted digital
practice: Comparing privacy considerations based on parental motivations;
2.
Moral and affective economies of sharenting by influencers and ordinary
parents;
3. Sharenting of psychological maltreatment behavior on TikTok;
4. A
deceptive family photography: Toward a potential deepfake sharenting;
5.
Beyond the Family Album: Motivations and Meanings Behind Sharenting;
6.
Sharenting through the lens of the communicative figurations: Understanding
children's reactions;
7. Adolescents Navigating Sharenting: Autonomy,
Intimacy, and Care in the Mediatized Family; II. Privacy and Sharenting;
8.
Towards mindful sharenting: How parents and children navigate the online
disclosure of personal information;
9. Sharenting Behaviour Among Iranian
Parents: Understanding the Role of Online Privacy Literacy, Privacy Attitude,
and Gender;
10. Secure Parenting, Insecure Privacy: Examining Parenting
Information Disclosure Through Protection Motivation Theory;
11. Insights
into the consequences of sharenting syndrome: Protecting children's futures;
12. Exploring Attitudes and Perspectives Towards Sharenting: Understanding
the Intersection of Privacy, Parenting, and Social Media; III.
Contextualization, Conceptualization, and Legal Problematization;
13. Parents
as Adversaries, Stewards, and Selves: How Academic Research on Sharenting
Discursively Constructs Parent-Child Subject Relations;
14. Sharenting as
portmanteau: A rhetorical carrier and cloak of patriarchy;
15. Sharenting
viewed through the lens of vulnerability theory;
16. Balancing Public and
Private: Sharenting and Child Rights in the Baltic States;
17. Sharenting as
a subject and object of freedom of expression
Gergely Ferenc Lendvai is a researcher and chief reference officer at the Science Strategy Office at LUPS Budapest and a research fellow at DARL Budapest (ELTE). His research interests include media law, human rights, internet law, and computational social sciences (empirical sociological studies and scientometrics). He is also the editor of the Legal and Ethical Issues of Chilling Effect, co-edited with Gergely Gosztonyi (2026), and Digital Parenting/Digitális szülség, co-edited with András Koltay (2025).
Arantxa Vizcaíno-Verdú is Associate Professor at Universidad Internacional de La Rioja, Spain. Her work explores media and information literacy and the dynamics of digital culture, focusing on how children and young people engage with user-generated content, influencers, and participatory storytelling across social media platforms.
Anca Velicu is a researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the Romanian Academy, Romania, with over 20 years of experience in studying childrens and adolescents use of digital technologies. Her research interests include childrens online risks and opportunities, cyber violence, parental mediation, gender-based misuse of personal data, digital literacy, and media education. Her latest book is Children and Digital Technologies during the COVID-19 Period (2023).
András Koltay is Research Professor at the University of Public Service and Professor of Law at Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Budapest, Hungary. His principal research concerns freedom of speech and the press, media regulation, and platform law. He is the author of New Media and Freedom of Expression (2019) and Media Freedom and the Law (2024).
