Older and younger adults are influenced differently by dark pattern designs

TL;DR

This study investigates how dark pattern design strategies in privacy interfaces differently influence older and younger adults' privacy concerns and disclosure behaviors, revealing age-specific effects of framing, defaults, and justifications.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence on age-related differences in response to dark pattern strategies in privacy decisions, highlighting the need for age-sensitive design considerations.

Findings

Dark patterns increase disclosure for both age groups.

Positive framing and opt-out defaults boost disclosure behavior.

Older adults experience increased privacy concerns with certain dark patterns.

Abstract

Considering that prior research has found older users undergo a different privacy decision-making process compared to younger adults, more research is needed to inform the behavioral privacy disclosure effects of these strategies for different age groups. To address this gap, we used an existing dataset of an experiment with a photo-tagging Facebook application. This experiment had a 2x2x5 between-subjects design where the manipulations were common dark pattern design strategies: framing (positive vs. negative), privacy defaults (opt-in vs. opt-out), and justification messages (positive normative, negative normative, positive rationale, negative rationale, none). We compared older (above 65 years old, N=44) and young adults (18 to 25 years old, N=162) privacy concerns and disclosure behaviors (i.e., accepting or refusing automated photo tagging) in the scope of dark pattern design. Overall, we find support for the effectiveness of dark pattern designs in the sense that positive framing and opt-out privacy defaults significantly increased disclosure behavior, while negative justification messages significantly decreased privacy concerns. Regarding older adults, our results show that certain dark patterns do lead to more disclosure than for younger adults, but also to increased privacy concerns for older adults than for younger.