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Many parents worry about the privacy and online safety of technologies designed for their children. But we know much less about what children themselves find in emerging technologies.
Researchers at the University of Washington have for the first time defined what children mean when they say the technology is "scary". In a new study, the kids described the scary technology as something unpredictable or an ambiguous threat that could cause physical harm or threaten an important relationship. Researchers have also identified five aspects of emerging technologies that may contribute to this sense of ambiguity.
The team presented its findings on May 8 at the 2019 ACM CHI conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems in Glasgow, Scotland.
"Over the years working with children, we understood that they often used the word" goosebumps "to reject specific technologies," said the first author, Jason Yip, Assistant Professor at UW & # 39; s Information School. "But children have a hard time articulating what makes it worrying, so we designed a series of activities to give them the opportunity to think about their own ideas and help us understand."
Previous research indicated that adults described ambiguous threats as scary and not scary. The team therefore organized four separate design sessions to see if the kids had the same feelings about the scary technology. During these sessions, 11 children ages 7-11 developed their own technologies or classified real or imaginary technologies as "scary", "not scary" or "do not know". Devices that may cause physical harm or disrupt a significant relationship have been classified as frightening.
"When we thought about what would worry children, we never thought that they might be afraid that technology would prevent them and their parents, and that this would be such an important issue in their lives. mind, "said co Alexis Hiniker, assistant professor at iSchool.
The team discovered five properties of the technology that sparked these fears:
Deception against transparency
Children want to understand how the technology works and the information collected by a device. For example, when a child asked a digital voice assistant he would kill him in his sleep and that he would say, "I can not answer that question," the child was worried.
"I'm afraid I do not have an answer to this question," it works well if I ask how much hair is on top of my head, "Yip said." But with these types of questions, this answer seems misleading. "
Disappearing Physical Appearance
Children are sensitive to the appearance, sounds and senses of a technology. But that does not mean that only the traditionally scary technologies are dismal: children were also wary of Maslo, an application with a big black dot as an interface, because it looked like a "black spirit" or a "black hole". "
Lack of control
Children want to control the access of technology to their information and their transmission to their parents. For example, when children were asked to design a reliable technology, some of them devised a smart trash that scanned and deleted their facial recognition data whenever they did it. using. Their trash can also include a button for manual deletion of data.
unpredictability
Children do not like technology acting unexpectedly, like automatically knowing their name or laughing. For the children, laughter could communicate a hidden intention, even malicious.
Mimicry
Children do not like technology that claims to be anything else, especially when it tries to imitate people in their life or themselves. A technology that imitates them might be to try to steal their identity or disrupt family relationships.
"The five themes are related to ambiguous threats.This is not a particular monstrosity that follows them, for example when something scares, it's more nuanced so that they're not sure of the consequences of their actions, "said Yip. "The children continued to refer to the Coraline movie.In history, the dolls ask Coraline to make a change:" If you sew buttons on your eyes and you become like us, we will love you forever . This makes the following sensation: "Wait a second, sew buttons on my eyes. What do I compromise here? "
The team found that trusted adults had some influence on whether children thought some devices were scary. For example, one child rated smartphones "not scary" because he saw his parents using them. Another child thought that laptops were scary because his parents stuck a piece of paper on the camera to "keep thieves away."
The researchers acknowledged that their findings could be used to create a false sense of security through the technology used. However, the team thinks it's more important to make these results available to the public to help parents talk to their kids about the technology and any kind of fears that may arise.
"Children have access to as many different technologies as when we were growing up," Hiniker said. "But their fundamental fears have not changed at all.Children want to feel physically safe and attached to trusted adults who will protect them."
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