Demand for Parental Advice in the Digital Sphere

•  90 percent of new parents are Millennials. 71 percent of Millennial parents give a high value to parental advice from digital sources, including blogs, parenting websites, forums, and social networks.
• More than one third of mothers and half of fathers turn to social media daily for help with parenting issues.
•  Parenting Hero, a paid app that teaches parents how to talk to their children to positively affect behavior, is ranked 10th in the U.S. for parenting apps and 5th in the U.K. For overall ongoing usage of all apps, it is ranked 8,072nd in the U.S. and 3,319th in the U.K., signifying a high ongoing demand for parental apps related to behavior.
• As of June 1st, 2018, there were 4,300 parenting-related free apps on the Google Play Store, signifying a large market based on the number of competitors.
• One of the most popular parenting apps is BabyCenter, a commercial app that includes teaching parents how to address behavioral issues in toddlers. As of June 1st, 2018, it has been downloaded ~10 million times.
• A study found the U.S. had the largest well-being penalty for parents of 22 countries. This means parents (particularly moms) in the U.S. have low support and are thus turning to other sources for parental advice and support in the form of an app, article, or ebook.
•  66 percent of mothers identified helpful parenting information on social media in the 30 days before a study, while 48 percent of fathers did the same.
• In a 2018 survey, 49 percent of Millennial parents and caregivers responded that they used mobile parenting apps. 94 percent had a smartphone.

Related Findings

• Millennials watch internet videos in general more than 2.5 times than traditional TV, indicating a much higher digital consumption.
• Science-based websites (like WebMD and the Center for Disease Control) are much more trusted (82 percent) than social media (54 percent) for parental advice among Millennials.
• Usage of parental apps varies among ethnicities with Latino parents most likely to use them (65 percent), followed by African American parents (62 percent).