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Parents seem to become more and more used to social media nowadays. However, their experience is quite different than that of their children, because they perceive a great many things differently.
The Pew Research Center has recently conducted a survey on parents and their experience with social media. They defined the term “parents” as people who have children no longer than 18 and they started analyzing their social media behavior.
Firstly, the favored social media platform among parents is unsurprisingly Facebook. This could be explained by the fact that is regarded as the main means of online social interaction and because parents have been hearing about it for quite some time now. Facebook is the proffered social media platform for both mothers and fathers.
It is followed by Pinterest and Instagram among mothers and Twitter and LinkedIn among fathers, most likely because picture-based media greatly appeals to mothers and women in general.
Facebook pages are most often set up by the children themselves or by work colleagues who have discovered just how entertaining roaming on social media could be. The younger parents usually create their own pages though, but they still regard the content from a different standpoint. Naturally, a parent’s Facebook page will rarely be selfie ridden and filled with check-ins at the hottest events.
According to the Pew study, parents regard social media platforms are sources of information on various topics. Furthermore, the majority of both mothers and fathers think that social media provides useful and even very useful information.
A popular topic of social media content that both mothers and fathers are particularly interested in is actually advice on various parenting issues. Only about 60% of them look for such information, but among them, the mothers seem to be especially interested in it. Therefore, mothers actually find relevant data and receive online support on parenting issues twice as often as fathers do.
Another popular type of information that parents are provided by social media is news about their close and distant family and their online and real-life friends. Since social media is most times the most accessible means o communication with their loved ones and their acquaintances, parents seem thrilled to be able to find out what those around them have been up to in just a few clicks.
Most of them comment on positive news to show their joy, while only some of them opt to comment on bad news posts, to show their support. Parents have a more realistic view on social media and so, they often keep their friends lists relevant to their real life friends and family, as opposed to their kids, who have thousands of online friends they will never talk to, even on social media.
The Pew survey reveals that parents are warming up to the idea of social media and not only that, but they seem to have formed their own community that has personalized the entire platform to fit their wants and needs.
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