A survey of the Facebook habits of parents has found that one of their primary motivations for joining is to keep tabs on their offspring’s social lives – even into their 30s.
It found that mums and dads log in once a day on average for a daily update on where there children have been, who they’ve befriended and to scan for any changes to their ‘relationship status’.
Mothers were found to be 14% more likely than fathers to engage in such behaviour but overall, two in three parents admitted utilising the site to spy for an average of 18 hours per week.
Eleven per cent of respondents claimed such snooping was the only way to keep tabs on their child’s current partner and 16 per cent freely admitted to trawling the site for additional information on their friends.
Meanwhile fully a fifth owned up to keeping tabs on their children’s movements via the site and two per cent even claimed to monitor their spending habits via their posts.
The survey of 1,000 parents with children aged 16-30 was conducted by Vouchercodes.