This thesis investigates how parents engage in sharing their children’s personal information on online social networks (OSNs), and how this behaviour intersects with platform design, legal frameworks, and emerging attitudes around digital responsibility. Using an abductive research design structured around four data streams, parents, public users, cybersecurity professionals, and law enforcement, it explores the behavioural, institutional, and regulatory contexts that shape digital parenting practices. Findings show that parents are not passive or indiscriminate users but act strategically across platforms, adjusting their behaviour based on audience and perceived risk. However, this intentionality is constrained by opaque privacy tools, complex terms of service, and OSN architectures that actively encourage sharing with both strong and weak ties. As such, the so-called privacy paradox is reconceptualised not as behavioural inconsistency but as a structural and design-driven problem. The study also reveals widespread distrust in regulatory protections such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which are perceived by both lay and professional stakeholders as symbolically significant but operationally ineffective. A minority of public participants attributed responsibility for data protection to children themselves, suggesting shifting norms around child agency. These findings contribute original insights by challenging deficit models of digital parenting, reframing the nature of privacy failures, and evidencing a shared legitimacy crisis across stakeholder groups. The thesis concludes that meaningful protection of children’s data requires multi-level interventions across platform design, legal enforcement, and digital education, grounded in an understanding of responsibility as distributed rather than individualised.
| Date of Award | 24 Sept 2025 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | Simon Parkinson (Main Supervisor) & Rachel Armitage (Co-Supervisor) |
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