New research from global cybersecurity and digital privacy company, Kaspersky, and Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) finds that parents in APAC and in Egypt find it easier to protect their kids online as they age, and mothers’ protective instincts result to more positive behaviors on digital privacy.
“Sharenting”, or the act of parents sharing their parenting journeys including their children’s photo and data online, have become common as the 21st century’s parents’ lives are mostly grounded in technology. While there are benefits to sharing parenting journeys online, such as building supportive communities, documenting memories, and exchanging advice, it also comes with clear and growing risks.
The latest Kaspersky and SIT research, “Small Shares, Big Risks: How Parents Assess Threats and Cope with Sharing of Children’s Data”, explored the motivational drivers that influence parents’ proactive approach to protecting their children’s privacy on social media. It attempts to understand how parents appraise the risks associated with documenting their children’s lives online, how confident they are in their own ability and the effectiveness of strategic measures to safeguard their privacy.
Co-written by Trishia Octaviano, Senior Manager, Cybersecurity Education for Asia Pacific at Kaspersky, and Associate Professor Jiow Hee Jhee, Deputy Director, Teaching and Learning Academy at the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT), the study is based on 152 online responses from Hong Kong, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, and Vietnam.
Its key findings reveal that parents’ confidence, experience, and instincts are emerging as key drivers of how effectively they protect their children’s online privacy.
Confidence and the steps parents are taking to protect their kids online while “sharenting”
At the core of these findings is “coping appraisal”, how parents evaluate their ability to respond to online threats. The study identifies perceived self-efficacy, or parents’ confidence in their ability to manage digital risks, as the strongest predictor of protective action. This includes their ability to control privacy settings, limit data exposure, and manage what third parties can learn about their children online.
Encouragingly, a large majority of parents are ready to adopt proactive steps to safeguard their children’s privacy.
More than four in every five parents surveyed believe that they can avoid displaying identifiable information (PII) such as birthdates, schools, or addresses (85%), avoid sharing potentially embarrassing images of their children (85%), limit access to shared content to family and close friends (84%), and refrain from posting identifiable personal details (83%).
Majority of parents also believe in their ability to take extra steps to control how their children’s photos and information spread online with 80% removing resharing permissions and some 78% disabling metadata and geotagging features.
These findings mean majority of the parents feel confident and capable in not just controlling who sees their content, but also how far it can spread and what hidden information it reveals.
Parents are also self-assured about their ability to adopt intentional and child-centric practices with 84% saying that they can engage family members and close friends in discussions on protecting children’s privacy and 82% agreeing that they have to ability to ask for their children’s permission before posting content about them.
The study further finds that perceived response efficacy, the parents’ belief that these measures are effective, is the second strongest predictor of safe content-sharing behaviour. When parents trust that their actions make a difference, they are more likely to follow through consistently.
The role of age and gender in kids’ online security
Beyond confidence, age and gender also play a critical role in shaping parents’ behaviour in the digital realm.
According to the survey, as parents grow older, they perceive fewer barriers to adopting privacy-protection measures. The “response cost” or the perceived effort required to manage privacy settings or use more secure platforms, declines with age.
This indicates that parents become more comfortable in navigating digital environments and are more willing to take action as they age. Learning comes through experience, even in the online world.
At the same time, gender differences reveal that mothers tend to lean into safer digital practices more. The research shows that mothers demonstrate stronger intentions to protect their children’s privacy due to their better coping appraisal perception. They are more likely to believe in the effectiveness of privacy measures and feel confident in their ability to act safely on social media.
These findings suggest that maternal protective instincts extend into the digital space, resulting in more cautious and deliberate sharing behaviours.
“In general, as parents age, they gain more experience in parenting and become more perceptive to threats and vulnerabilities, both online and offline, leading to heightened proactiveness in responding and protecting. As for mothers, they have a biological drive to safeguard their children in the physical world, which translates into a desire to shield them from digital threats as well. Based on our overall findings, we can infer that continuous cybersecurity education and media literacy training are needed regardless of age or gender”, comments Octaviano.
“This study highlights a growing reality of modern parenting: while sharing family moments online can create connection and support, it can also expose children to risks that are often invisible—such as profiling, unwanted tracking, and misuse of personal information. Our findings show that parents are highly motivated to protect their children’s privacy when they feel confident in their ability to take practical steps and believe those steps truly work. We encourage parents to take a moment today to review their social media privacy settings and have a simple family conversation about what should—and should not—be shared online, because protecting children’s digital footprint starts with the choices we make every day,” adds A/Prof Jhee.
To help parents build their kids’ and their family’s safety online, Kaspersky experts present a quick checklist of how to manage digital privacy for your family’s safety: Delete old accounts that you no longer use. Set your accounts to private if you do not intend for your profile to be public. Take time to navigate the privacy settings on your social media accounts, and check them regularly, as they tend to change. Review your network of contacts, past activities, and profile visibility.
Before disclosing any information online, think about whether it could be used against you. Be mindful about disclosing geolocation in posts and remove metadata from photo files. (For a detailed instruction on how to do so, read this article on Kaspersky blogsite: How to remove metadata from photos, videos, and other files, and why do it at all | Kaspersky official blog). Consider taking down posts that expose your child’s frequent and significant locations, e.g. school, sports club. Actively monitor your child’s online activities. Use tools such as Kaspersky Safe Kids that also comes with Kaspersky Premium. This app makes parental controls easy including tracking whereabouts and device habits, restrict content, balance screen time, and more in an all-in-one app.