Abstract Parents are busy people. Designing social software for parents requires understanding the particular needs and constraints governing their lives. In this paper, we present a study of a community-based site called ParentNet. Based on prior formative work, ParentNet was designed to support parents in keeping up with their children's social media use. With 10 months of deployment and 133 participants, ParentNet was successful in some regards and unsuccessful in others. Drawing from log data and focus groups, we arrive at three findings. First, parents may not easily switch from existing school communication platforms that they are already familiar with. Second, school support was critical for promoting adoption. Third, parents felt like they had too much technology in their lives and were not looking for more platforms to keep up with. We conclude with lessons for designing for parents and a discussion of technology overuse as a design constraint
