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The purpose of this paper is to examine mothers’ social media accounts that focus on children’s fashion. The authors probed children’s fashion photo practices as representations of the mothers’ extended self and the kind of childhood representations produced by the social media accounts. They also investigated mothers’ perceptions of children’s privacy when engaging in sharenting – the sharing of information about children or parenting online.

The study is based on 16 semi-structured interviews with Finnish mothers who had Instagram accounts focusing on children’s fashion.

Children’s fashion photos play a diverse role in mothers’ identity work. The photos can be used to express a mother’s taste and aesthetic skills, to express values, to fit into peer groups and to store memories of oneself and the children. Through the photos, representations of the prevailing Finnish childhood ideals, such as authenticity, naturalness and playfulness, are reproduced. The mothers perceived the children as part of their extended self and justified sharenting with mother- and child-centered arguments.

Through shedding light on the practices of social media fashion photography, this paper provides insights into how commercialism and social media shape cultural expectations for both motherhood and childhood. The paper contributes to previous research on sharenting, extending it to the context of fashion photography.

This study focuses on how young adults face the COVID-19 pandemic by investigating their personal concerns about mental well-being, career/studies and economic situation. The authors investigated how young adults' (aged 18–29) personal concerns differ from older people's concerns (aged 30–65) and which person- and context-related antecedents relate to personal concerns.

Data of Finnish young adults aged 18–29 (n = 222), who participated in the “Corona Consumers” survey (N = 1,000) in April 2020, were analyzed by path analysis and compared to participants aged 30–65 by independent samples t-test.

Young adults were significantly more concerned about the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on their mental well-being, career/studies and economic situation than older people. Females were more concerned about their mental well-being than males. Among youth, lower life satisfaction was related to concerns about mental well-being, and lower satisfaction with financial situation was related to concerns about career/studies and economic situation. Young adults' predisposition to avoid difficult situations was related to more frequent concerns in all domains, whereas generalized trust and education were not.

Due to cross-sectional data, causal COVID-19 interpretations should be made cautiously.

Strong youth policies are needed for youth empowerment, mental health and career advancement in the pandemic aftermath.

The study highlights the inequality of the effects of COVID-19: The pandemic has radically influenced young adults as they exhibit significant personal concerns in age-related life domains.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the material conditions of peoples’ daily lives by investigating changes in the self-perceived necessities of ten technology- and leisure-related consumer goods and services between 1999 and 2009. The authors also look at the socio-demographic predictors of the perceptions and the development of the ownership of the goods under investigation.

The data are derived from surveys “Finland – Consumption and way of life” 1999 (N=2,417), 2004 (N=3,574), and 2009 (N=1,202). The statistical analysis methods include ANOVA and descriptive statistics. Also official statistics are used.

Many technological goods, in particular, have become necessities for most people, and the ownership rates have increased notably. Age, type of household, place of residence and gender affected the necessity of most items. Income affected the necessity of expensive goods and services.

The ways goods become social decencies does not always follow economic rationalities or are explained by conventional socio-economic determinants. The meaning of life course stage and related daily practices are probably more important than is usually recognized in social studies. Particularly many ICT goods become socially perceived necessities soon after their emergence, which changes the perceptions of adequate living standards, affecting thus the definition of “basic needs” and related social policy.

The perceptions of necessities and other measures of living standards have been mainly looked at from the viewpoint of poverty and income. This study explains the perceived necessity of goods and services by several socio-demographic variables.

This article aims to explore the role of online environments in children’s everyday life. We examine the meanings that children aged 11-13, parents and teachers derive from their understanding of online environments and make a typology of the perceived opportunities and risks of the online environments for children. The research questions are: how do children, parents and teachers experience the effect of online environments on children’s everyday lives, what opportunities and risks for children are noticed in online environments and what similarities and differences are there in children’s, parents’ and teachers’ point of views in terms of opportunities and risks? The theoretical framework of the study consists of the discussion on opportunities and risks of using online environments.

The data were collected by conducting semi-structured interviews in Finland in 2012. Altogether, 27 interviews were conducted with children, parents and primary school teachers. The interview data were analysed with content analysis.

As a result, we found four types of perceived effects that represent opportunities and risks: learning and socialization, sense of community and empowerment, antisocial behaviour and threat to security. According to this study, children, parents and teachers agree with each other in many issues concerning children’s use of the online environments. On the other hand, children also have issues and problems that parents and teachers may not be aware of, or they do not view them as important.

This qualitative study focused on how children, parents and teachers described their subjective feelings about the effects of using the online environments. Thus, this study provides a new viewpoint on the research that has mostly relied on querying parents or teachers about children’s use of the Internet, neglecting children’s often different perspectives on the risks of the Internet.