Can social media influence how parents feed their children?

What We Found

What We Can Learn From This

Mothers were more likely than fathers to use social media for child feeding and family meals but mothers’ social media use was not associated with their food parenting practices.
Fathers who used social media to share and compare family meals and food choices were more likely to:

• Use food to regulate their child’s emotions.
• Use food as a reward.
• Be less likely to monitor unhealthy foods.
• Be less likely to encourage balance and variety in their child’s diet.

Simply using social media to look for information was not associated with food parenting practices for either mothers or fathers.

How parents use social media may be more important than how much they use it. Helping parents, especially fathers, critically evaluate food-related content on social media and identify trustworthy nutrition information may support healthier food parenting practices. This study cannot determine whether social media causes changes in food parenting as it was cross-sectional.