Privacy or Transparency? Negotiated Smartphone Access as a Signifier of Trust in Romantic Relationships

TL;DR

This study explores how trust influences smartphone access boundaries in romantic relationships, revealing diverse norms, boundary violations, and proposing design solutions for boundary enforcement to support trust and privacy.

Contribution

It provides large-scale empirical insights into smartphone sharing norms, boundary violations, and introduces design recommendations for boundary enforcement in romantic contexts.

Findings

Most couples share smartphone access but with varying boundaries.

Broad disagreement exists on desired levels of transparency and privacy.

Boundary violations can undermine trust and may relate to intimate partner violence.

Abstract

In this work, we analyze two large-scale surveys to examine how individuals think about sharing smartphone access with romantic partners as a function of trust in relationships. We find that the majority of couples have access to each others' devices, but may have explicit or implicit boundaries on how this access is to be used. Investigating these boundaries and related social norms, we find that there is little consensus about the level of smartphone access (i.e., transparency), or lack thereof (i.e., privacy) that is desirable in romantic contexts. However, there is broad agreement that the level of access should be mutual and consensual. Most individuals understand trust to be the basis of their decisions about transparency and privacy. Furthermore, we find individuals have crossed these boundaries, violating their partners' privacy and betraying their trust. We examine how, when, why, and by whom these betrayals occur. We consider the ramifications of these boundary violations in the case of intimate partner violence. Finally, we provide recommendations for design changes to enable technological enforcement of boundaries currently enforced by trust, bringing access control in line with users' sharing preferences.