Protection or punishment? relating the design space of parental control apps and perceptions about them to support parenting for online safety

TL;DR

This study analyzes how design variations in parental control apps influence parental and children's perceptions of their effectiveness and explores design improvements to better support online safety and healthy parent-child relationships.

Contribution

It identifies key axes of variation in parental control app design and links them to user perceptions, offering evidence-based recommendations for future app development.

Findings

Three major axes of variation: granularity, transparency, communication support.

Design variation impacts perceived usefulness and effectiveness.

Provides design recommendations based on user perceptions and digital parenting theories.

Abstract

Parental control apps, which are mobile apps that allow parents to monitor and restrict their children's activities online, are becoming increasingly adopted by parents as a means of safeguarding their children's online safety. However, it is not clear whether these apps are always beneficial or effective in what they aim to do; for instance, the overuse of restriction and surveillance has been found to undermine parent-child relationship and children's sense of autonomy. In this work, we investigate this gap, asking specifically: how might children's and parents' perceptions be related to how parental control features were designed? To investigate this question, we conducted an analysis of 58 top Android parental control apps designed for the purpose of promoting children's online safety, finding three major axes of variation in how key restriction and monitoring features were realised: granularity, feedback/transparency, and parent-child communications support. To relate these axes to perceived benefits and problems, we then analysed 3264 app reviews to identify references to aspects of the each of the axes above, to understand children's and parents' views of how such dimensions related to their experiences with these apps. Our findings led towards 1) an understanding of how parental control apps realise their functionalities differently along three axes of variation, 2) an analysis of exactly the ways that such variation influences children's and parents' perceptions, respectively of the usefulness or effectiveness of these apps, and finally 3) an identification of design recommendations and opportunities for future apps by contextualising our findings within existing digital parenting theories.