Sharenting as communication: A scoping review of parental sharing of children’s digital content

The widespread use of social media has significantly reshaped digital parenting practices, family communication, and children’s digital well-being. Across the globe, digitally connected parents frequently share photos, videos, and personal information about their children online without fully considering the potential long-term implications for their children’s privacy and digital identities in networked environments. Sharenting, which refers to the practice of parents sharing child-related content online, has increasingly emerged as a mediated communication phenomenon embedded within digitally networked family life. The scoping review analyzes 72 empirical studies published from 2015 to 2023 on sharenting and its implications. The findings indicated a shift in scholarly attention from parental motivations and self-presentation toward privacy negotiation, children’s digital rights, and agency. This shift highlights the growing recognition of sharenting as a relational communication practice involving tensions between parental expression and children’s autonomy. This review demonstrated that communication privacy, children’s digital rights, identity construction, and online visibility are prominently addressed in Western cultures, but less so in non-Western contexts. Based on these findings, this study contributes to communication scholarship on sharenting as a globally mediated parenting phenomenon by offering a cross-cultural perspective on privacy negotiation, children’s digital identities, and family communication practices in contemporary networked societies.