• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer, January 29, 2016

The kids are having kids now – well, if you consider everyone under the age of 30 a kid, which I absolutely do – and, true to form, they’re turning to the Web for advice about parenting, as well as managing family responsibilities. That’s according to a new report from Crowdtap, which surveyed a thousand millennial parents about their online behaviors.

Okay, nobody is saying the Web will replace your mom as the ultimate source of parenting advice: grandma was still cited by 40% of millennial moms and 37% of millennial dads as their first choice for advice (compared to just 2% and 7%, respectively, for grandpa – ouch!). But the next most popular external source of advice was parenting Web sites, cited by 13% of millennial moms and 12% of millennial dads, compared to 8% each for the next most popular source, friends.

Meanwhile 5% of millennial moms and 4% of millennial dads said they go to social media first, while 2% and 1%, respectively, go to blogs. Putting all these online sources together (Web sites, social media, and blogs), 20% of millennial moms and 17% of millennial dads gave some form of digital media their top preference for parenting advice.

Beyond advice, millennial parents are also using social media for parenting responsibilities, with 37% of moms and almost half of dads saying they visit social media once a day for family purposes. 90% of both millennial moms and dads said they find social media somewhat or extremely useful for parenting purposes.

Intriguingly, millennial dads were more likely than millennial moms to cite Pinterest as a main social destination for parenting purposes, while moms were more likely than dads to cite YouTube.

Of course there are negative qualities associated with social media as well: 20% of millennial moms and dads said they find it distracts them from family sometimes, while 17% of moms and 10% of dads said it is a source of social pressure, and 11% and 6%, respectively, said it induced information overload.