Do you interact with your daughter online?

Facebook investigated, anonymized and automatically processed posts and comments by people self-identified as parents and children to understand how they relate to each other. This past week, they have published those results, and we are happy to see that family ties have crossed digital planes and continue online.

What is interesting is how the age and gender of our children affects their online habits with their parents. Children between the ages of 13-17 are more likely to initiate the friend request with their parent. And the activity between a parent and their child is nearly balanced. Parents and teenagers are posting on each other’s walls and photos equally. As children get older, the likelihood of a friend request initiated by the child drops down to 20% when they are in their 20s, and parents are more likely the ones to initiate the communication on photos or wall posts.

Commenting activity starts out nearly balanced between younger teens and their parents. As the child gets older, parents are more likely the ones to initiate communication, possibly because their children post more photos, status updates, and other content where the parents can leave comments. Just as in real life, parents tell their kids to “be safe”, “thank you”, and “love you” everyday online. We are happy to see a typical words parents use with their daughters are “beautiful”, “my beautiful daughter”, and “all my heart.”

It is interesting to see how parents interact with their children online, and if you want to see the full report, you can find it here.

Facebook also shared the most popular videos that were exchanged between parents and their kids. Feel free to pass them along to your daughter:

▪   Martina McBride’s In My Daughter’s Eyes

▪   Tim McGraw’s My Little Girl

▪   Kenney Chesney’s There Goes My Life

Let us know if you are connected to your daughter on Facebook.

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Marci Hower is co-founder of Reflectwhoiam.com. She has been an active entrepreneur in a few different companies but her proudest moments have come in raising her 3 boys.