Our study looked at new parents’ use of Facebook. It followed 182 dual-earner couples who were expecting their first child across the year surrounding their transition to parenthood.
When their babies were nine months old, we surveyed these mothers and fathers about their use of Facebook and other social networking sites in the early months of parenthood.
We asked our questions of fathers as well as of mothers, but we quickly discovered that mothers were the ones spending more time on social networking sites and taking primary responsibility for posting baby photos. Thus, we focused our research on new mothers.
One of the first things we discovered was that certain mothers—specifically, those who were more concerned with others validating their identities as mothers and those who believed that others expect them to be perfect parents—were more active on Facebook. They reported stronger emotional reactions when posted photos of their child received more or fewer likes and comments than anticipated. [...]
A related study may provide an answer. Based on survey data from 721 mothers, Sarah Coyne from Brigham Young University and her colleagues reported that mothers who more frequently compared themselves to others on social networking sites felt more depressed, more overloaded in the parental role, and less competent as parents.
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