Young adults may have one of the strongest ties to social media sites, and according to a new study which evaluated 8,000 young parents in eight different countries, having a baby might actually increase the overall usage of social media.
According to Adweek, Ipsos Media found that parents’ Facebook posts about their babies typically earn 37% more interactions from family members and 47% more interactions from friends than non-baby posts.
And you know that feeling when you’re scrolling through your newsfeed and you wonder if everyone in the world just had a baby or if you’re just going crazy? Turns out, you aren’t imagining it at all. The study also found that new mothers post 2.5 times more status updates, 3.5 times more photos, and 4.2 times more videos than non-parents on Facebook.
One interesting trend that Facebook recently discovered is that, upon having their first child, parents globally spend more time accessing websites and apps through mobile devices, and this often results in a decrease of internet usage via desktop computers.
While smartphones do make it easier for young adults to waste time by “stalking” their friends and acquaintances on social media sites — and 89% of Millennials are active on social media already — mobile devices can still provide valuable benefits for parents. Facebook found that 83% of parents globally feel that they have more information available to them than their parents did at the same age, and 70% even feel that they’re more informed on parenting issues than their parents were.
Between Facebook groups that make it easy to target specific audiences when sharing information, to individual tweets and hashtags that allow new parents to connect directly with each other, social media may actually be one of the biggest boons for parents in the digital age.
