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Types of Information, Advice Seeking, and Parent Evaluation of Food Parenting Practices on Social Media

Sat, March 23, 2:30 to 4:00pm, Hilton Baltimore, Floor: Level 1, Ruth

Integrative Statement

How do parents’ posts and evaluation of feeding information on social media relate to their food parenting practices? Research suggests responsive food parenting practices that provide structure or autonomy support are positively associated with a healthy child diet, while non-responsive practices that rely on control are associated with unhealthy eating and adiposity (Vaughn et al., 2016). Parenting is thought to be shaped by many factors, including sources of support and information (Abidin, 1992; Belsky, 1984). In an increasingly digital world, social media has become a prominent source of information and support, especially so for parents (e.g., 83% of parents use social media daily, Pew Research, 2015; half of parents use social media to find parenting information, Baker, Sanders, & Morawska, 2017). However, to our knowledge there is no research directly considering the dynamics of feeding discussions among parents on social media. The goal of this exploratory research was to examine types of food parenting being disclosed and discussed on social media.

Methods: Public data were accessed via the Facebook Graph API (https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/) and a full historical store of Reddit posts (https://pushshift.io/api-parameters/). Facebook and Reddit were used due to the large amount of users and interactions on these platforms (Kozinets, 2015). For Facebook, only posts that had a privacy setting of “public” were used, and we only pulled data from fully public subreddits. These included three subreddits and two Facebook pages related to parenting, nutrition, or feeding. A coding system was developed, including: control, structure, and autonomy support (Table 1), as these overarching concepts have been determined by experts to represent three main categories of food parenting (O’Connor et al., 2017). A fourth category of recipes was added based on exploratory data and previous child feeding blog research (Doub, Small, & Birch, 2016). Sub-codes related to specific food parenting practices were also applied (Table 1) and each post was determined to be a question or not.

Results: Two coders established and maintained inter-rater reliability above 70% agreement. A total of 2,133 posts were examined, 853 (550 Facebook, 303 Reddit) were determined to encompass food parenting. Qualitatively, the data include a richness of topics being discussed with respect to feeding and nutrition. Quantitatively, 6% were coded as control, 43% structure, 11% autonomy support, and 41% recipes; of these 58% were questions. Chi-square tests of independence indicated differences by social media platform in all categories except autonomy support.

Discussion: Preliminary findings suggest the same food parenting topics found in observational and survey research are present on social media. The majority of posts were questions, indicating parents use social media as a place to seek advice for feeding. Differences between platforms indicate Facebook and Reddit likely have different uses for parents discussing feeding. As such, social media campaigns should differentially direct efforts through these platforms depending on the topic, for example sharing information about structure in feeding on Reddit versus healthy recipes on Facebook. Additional data currently being collected include phone interviews focused on parent evaluation and engagement with feeding information on social media.

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