According to eMarketer, 90.3% of moms with children at home are online, and it is the youngest moms—the Gen Y moms—who have truly embraced digital communication. They’re texting and using social networking sites–even for conversations with family members living under the same roof!

Once the exclusive realm of college kids, Facebook now attracts fully 86% of young moms, with one out of five admitting to spending two-plus hours a day on the social network. By comparison, one out of three Boomer moms is on Facebook every day and another third don’t use Facebook at all.

So what are we moms doing online and on our phones all day? Uploading adorable baby photos is only a small part of it. We’re searching for a community of like-minded parents. We’re looking for advice. We’re connecting with friends old and new. And since we’ve been shopping online since Amazon only sold books, the lines between online shopping and online socializing are increasingly becoming blurred.

As busy parents, we no longer have time to head down to the mall with our girlfriends to try on jeans. But we’re the shopping gatekeepers to our families and word-of-mouth is still our favorite way to find out about products and services we can trust.

It used to be “word of mom” happened on the playground, at the PTA meeting or over the phone. Now it’s instant. It’s constant. And it’s infinitely Googleable.  Just last month, one of my “tweeps” posed this question to the Twitterverse:

Within an hour, six of us replied with our views on the Scholastic Book Club.

Just as I was writing this post, I clicked over to Facebook and counted the brand mentions in my News Feed. There were two links to Groupon-style social shopping sites, three restaurants, two brand name products and one vacation destination reference, and all were posted by my friends. That’s eight marketing mentions separate from the two items posted by companies I follow.

Imagine if I was in shopping mode instead of blog-writing mode. I could be reading shoe reviews on Zappos, combing my favorite fashion blogs and sites for style inspiration and searching for coupon codes to apply to my purchase. Or I could, like some of my friends, poll my Facebook friends before making a major purchase. “I need a new dishwasher. Kenmore or Bosch?”

For that matter, I could be in a retail store, taking a photo of myself in an outfit and posting it to Facebook and Twitter or emailing it to my most stylish friend for approval. Or, should the store deliver less than awesome service, I might tweet about the long lines or capture pictures of the disastrous shelves.

I could be scanning for recipes while grocery shopping with Kraft’s iFood app or checking into a bar or restaurant on Foursquare and redeeming a reward just for being there.

While I’m something of an early adopter, millions of moms are embracing digital communications, and the moms behind us will have grown up digital natives. To help marketers understand how they are using social media to shop and communicate with brands, I’ll be moderating a panel of moms at the PMA’s Digital Marketing Summit: Fast Forward 2012: Social Media Demystified. The event is this Tuesday, October 19, in New York City.

Alma Klein is a Creative Director at Arc Worldwide. Follow her on Twitter @marketingmommy or her personal blog, Marketing Mommy.