More parents on Facebook seeking emotional advice

59 percent of social media-using parents have discovered useful information specifically about parenting via social media, with mothers (66 percent) more likely to do so than dads (48 percent).

As the first Pew study focused on parental social media use, study co-author Maeve Duggan said she was especially interested to learn that parents report they have fewer Facebook friends, but were much more likely to describe their Facebook friends as “actual friends“.

Parents also tend to have closer-knit social networks than non-parents. The latest study published June 14th, 2015 by the Pew Research Center in collaboration with John S. And James L. Knight Foundation found Twitter and Facebook serve as a source for news about event and issues. A new study from Pew Research Center sought to provide some clarity.

Just under half reported turning to social media to carry them when they’re feeling down about parenthood – 50 percent of moms received emotional and social support in this arena, compared with 28 percent of dads.

Wyma said parents should make social media work for them by logging on with a objective in mind or to answer a question. (Dads rang in at a more curmudgeonly 33 percent.).

While 81 percent of parents try to respond to good news their friends have shared, 58 percent of parents try to respond to bad news as well.

That aligns with trends on how prevalent social media use is between women and men, Duggan said.

While it is a known fact that youths take social media very seriously, and that they perceive what happens on the platforms as being extremely real, parents do the same, but in quite a different way. While fathers are often as likely as mothers to use social media to get information about parenting, they lag behind mothers in terms of the support they feel they get from social media use.

Some news outlets are anxious that the shift toward news updates via social media will eventually put them out of business.

“Something I found really interesting was that parents show relatively low levels of concern about what others post on social media”, she said. In the study, only one out of 10 parents said they had a problem with friends and family posting information about a parent’s child.

The survey was conducted in September in association with the University of Michigan’s School of Information and was based on a nationally representative sample of 2,003 American adults ages 18 and older. There’s also considerable overlap among users of both sites, which means that 8 percent of US adults now use both Facebook and Twitter to get news.

Sorry kids, there is no escaping mom, even on Facebook.