Institutionalized Sharenting: Industry Dynamics Shaping Children’s Visibility in Influencer Content

This article critically investigates the institutional dynamics that shape influencer sharenting, employing a constructivist framework and the concept of institutional work. Based on in-depth interviews with key industry stakeholders, the study demonstrates how children’s visibility within influencer marketing is strategically cultivated through the interdependent operation of economic, professional, and normative structures. The article introduces the concept of institutionalized sharenting to describe the processes through which sharenting becomes routinized and legitimized, enabling industry actors to capitalize on children’s presence while displacing full responsibility onto parents. This deflection is enacted through a variety of practices, such as the inclusion of children via strategic collaborations with their parents, and is framed through discourses of authenticity, intensive parenting, and personal choice. Ultimately, the paper argues that the marginalization of children, despite their centrality to the industry’s profitability, is sustained by adultist and neoliberal logics that frame children’s labour as play and familial monetization as empowerment.