From Framework to Practice: Youth Negotiations of Privacy with Smart Voice Assistants Through the PEA-AI Lens

TL;DR

This study investigates how Canadian youth perceive and negotiate privacy with smart voice assistants, revealing a privacy paradox and offering design principles to improve trust and privacy practices.

Contribution

It applies the PEA-AI framework to empirically analyze youth privacy perceptions and behaviors regarding SVAs, providing new insights into privacy negotiation and design implications.

Findings

Youth show moderate privacy concerns but also perceive benefits and engage in protective behaviors.

Transparency and trust in SVAs are rated lowest among youth.

Heavy SVA users perceive higher benefits and lower risks.

Abstract

Smart voice assistants (SVAs) have become embedded in the daily lives of youth, introducing complex privacy challenges due to always-on listening, shared device usage, and opaque data practices. This study applies the Privacy-Ethics Alignment in AI (PEA-AI) framework to examine how youth perceive and negotiate privacy within SVAs. Through a survey of 469 Canadian youth (aged 16-24), we measured five privacy constructs: Perceived Privacy Risk (PPR), Perceived Privacy Benefits (PPBf), Algorithmic Transparency and Trust (ATT), Privacy Self-Efficacy (PSE), and Privacy-Protective Behavior (PPB). Results reveal a persistent privacy paradox. While youth express moderate to high privacy concerns (PPR M = 3.61), perceived benefits (PPBf M = 3.00) and protective actions (PPB M = 3.03) remain moderate, with transparency and trust scoring lowest (ATT M = 2.52). Heavy SVA users report higher benefits and lower risk perception than light users. High protective behavior is strongly associated with both high risk perception and high self-efficacy. Qualitative insights from prior focus groups contextualize these patterns, illustrating how youth navigate tensions between convenience, control, and trust. The findings provide actionable design principles for SVA along with implications for multi-stakeholder governance and youth-centered digital literacy.