Where Are Our Family Photos? Survey Reveals Troubling Trends About How Families Are Saving Memories

NEW YORK, June 24, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The findings of a new survey commissioned by Keepy and conducted online on its behalf by Harris Poll in May 2014 should serve as a wake-up call for parents. While digital cameras, smartphones and other devices have made it easier than ever to capture photos and videos of memorable moments in our children's lives, technology has made our memories significantly harder to access and save for the future.

The survey, conducted among over 250 parents of kids under age 10 who share photos/video with family and friends, reveals that three quarters (75%) of these parents save photos and videos of their children in multiple locations, more than half (52%) say they have not done anything with the tons of photos/videos they have of their children to preserve them for the future and 44% say they sometimes have trouble locating photos and videos of their children because they can't remember where the files are saved. Even more worrisome is the fact that nearly half (47%) of these parents say they have not really thought about how they will share the photos and videos they have of their children with them when they are older.

"Between smartphones, DSLRs, and iPads, most parents today have multiple devices with which to capture family memories," says digital life expert David Ryan Polgar. "We are seeing a dramatic increase in the volume of photos and videos families are capturing, but unfortunately content is often captured quickly and then forgotten or lost. Ironically, the most photographed generation of children may have the fewest photos and videos to look back at if parents do not save and preserve their memories in a lasting way."

Key findings from the survey include:

Where is it saved? Majority of parents of kids under age 10 who share photos/video with family and friends have their photos/videos stored in 3 or more places.

• 75% of these parents save their children's photos or videos in various places, and this number is even higher (86%) for these parents with children ages 3-5.
• 56% of these parents have their children's photos/videos saved in 3 or more places while 20% have them saved in 5 or more places.
• 92% of these parents save photos/video online, including 57% who save on a computer hard drive, 53% on social media, 30% on an external hard drive, 26% on photo sharing site and 24% in cloud-based storage.

Parents wish they saved more written notes about the memories captured in photos and videos.

• The majority (51%) of these parents say they wish they took the time to write down information about each photo/video so they would remember the moment more.
• 41% of these parents say they remember what happened in family photos/videos by posting about it on social media, which is great for now but may make it harder to preserve and access in the future.

Technology is a blessing and a curse for family memories.

• 62% of these parents say technology makes it easier to take photos but harder to access them in the future because they are saved in so many places. (To get a sense of how overwhelming our photo-taking has become, Yahoo! estimates that more than 880 billion photos will be taken in 2014.)

Parents feel overwhelmed with photos and the idea of organizing them.

• More than half (52%) of these parents say they have tons of photos/videos of their children, but haven't done anything with them to keep them for the future.
• The thought of organizing all their photos/videos overwhelms half (50%) of these parents.

Sorry, kids. We're not sure where your photos are.

• Nearly half (47%) of these parents have not really thought about how they will share the photos/videos they have of their children with them when they are older.
• A surprising percentage of these parents (33%) are actually worried their children will not be able to see any photos or videos from their childhood because they are saved in so many different places.

The implications of this survey are significant, as it reveals a major divide between capturing vast amounts of content and actually creating lasting memories.  The inability to effectively curate the photos and the videos and turn them into memories, accessible in one central location may prevent children from reliving the story of their life in the future—the very reason that parents presumably took photos and videos in the first place.

"Parents are understandably concerned and struggling with how to save the stories of their children's lives in our increasingly digital and mobile world," said Offir Gutelzon, founder and CEO of Keepy. "As a company focused on creating a new way for families to save and share their memories – this survey really hit home for us how important memory preservation is and how great the need is among families for a solution that helps them not just save files but turn those photos and videos into real memories."

About Keepy

Keepy is the fastest growing mobile app for families to save and share memories (e.g. Evernote for memories). As a multi-generational mobile platform, parents use it to build their kids' memory timeline, include grandparents and the extended family too, allows the family to leave voice and video comments to turn the photos and the videos we take every day into a memory that kids can relive for now for later and forever. Keepy is available on iOS, Android, and Kindle Fire.

Survey Methodology

This survey was conducted online within the United States between May 27^th and 29^th, 2014 among 264 parents of kids under 10 who share photos/videos with family/friends by Harris Poll on behalf of Keepy via its Quick Query omnibus product. Figures for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region and household income were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was used to adjust for respondents' propensity to be online.

All sample surveys and polls, whether or not they use probability sampling, are subject to multiple sources of error which are most often not possible to quantify or estimate, including sampling error, coverage error, error associated with nonresponse, error associated with question wording and response options, and post-survey weighting and adjustments. Therefore, the words "margin of error" are avoided as they are misleading. All that can be calculated are different possible sampling errors with different probabilities for pure, unweighted, random samples with 100% response rates. These are only theoretical because no published polls come close to this ideal.

Respondents for this survey were selected from among those who have agreed to participate in our surveys. The data have been weighted to reflect the composition of the adult population. Because the sample is based on those who agreed to participate in the panel, no estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated.

SOURCE Keepy