An Examination of Parenting Strategies for Children's Online Safety Abigail Marsh

228 Pages·2017·4.08 MB·English

An Examination of Parenting Strategies
for Children’s Online Safety
Abigail Marsh
CMU-ISR-18-106
August 2018
Institute for Software Research
School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Thesis Committee
Lorrie Faith Cranor, Advisor
Julie S. Downs
James D. Herbsleb
Amy S. Bruckman, Georgia Tech
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Societal Computing
©2018 Abigail Marsh
This research was supported in part by National Science Foundation grants CNS-1012763 and SES-
1618153, by a Facebook Fellowship awarded by Facebook Research, and by a K&L Gates Presidential
Fellowship awarded by the K&L Gates Endowment for Ethics and Computational Technologies. The
views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the author, and should not be inter-
preted as representing the o�cial policies, either expressed or implied, of any sponsoring institution,
the U.S. government, or any other entity.
Keywords: Usability, Human-Computer Interaction, Privacy, Online Privacy, Online, Inter-
net, Interview, Survey, Parents, Parenting, Teen, Teenager, Adolescent,Child, Children, Parenting
Strategies, Parenting Methods, Online Safety, Online Risk, Online Behavior, Parenting Software,
Parental Control Software, Behavior Contract
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Abstract
Teenagers are using the internet for a variety of social and identity-based activities, but in
doing so, they are exposed to risky situations. The work of ensuring teens’ online safety largely
falls to parents, many of whom are unprepared to understand the realities and norms of teens’
online activity. In this thesis, we investigate how parents and teens perceive online risks, the e↵ects
of using current tools designed to keep teens safe online, and finally, the usability of currently
available online safety tools. We have conducted interviews with parents and teens to understand
how they perceive digital privacy within their families, and in what situations teens’ privacy should
be preserved or denied. We investigated a specific case of online safety, peer-based online conflict
among teenagers, also called cyberbullying. We studied whether and how parents and teens define
cyberbullying and a related concept, “drama,” di↵erently. We explore the pressures parents face
to employ privacy-invasive and restrictive parenting practices, and their confusion about teens’
digital communities that make some parents unsure about communication and education-based
interventions. Weidentifiedasetofsevenparentingstrategiesthroughinterviewswithonlinesafety
professionals. We explored these strategies through a longitudinal study of parenting software and
behaviorcontractsincomparisontoacontrolcondition. Specifically,wemeasuredtheimpactofone
month of using these tools on participants’ perception of online risks and the usability challenges of
these tools. Overall, this thesis highlights the importance of developing usable online safety tools
built for both parents and children as primary users.
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Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 Parents’ and Teens’ Perspectives on Privacy In a Technology-Filled World 5
2.1 Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.2 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.2.1 Recruitment and Confidentiality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.2.2 Interview Procedure and Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2.3 Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2.4 Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.3 Results. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.3.1 Participant demographics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.3.2 Teens’ right to privacy from their parents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.3.3 Privacy in the Physical World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.3.4 Teen Privacy in the Digital World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.3.5 Decision making . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.4 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.5 Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3 Digital Parenting: A Comparative View of Strategies, from Expert, Parent, and
Teen Perspectives 27
3.1 Background and Related Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
3.1.1 Encouragement of Parental Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
3.1.2 Parenting, in Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.1.3 The Case Against Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.1.4 Miscommunication Within Families. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
3.2 Study One . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.2.1 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.2.2 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.3 Comparison to Digital Parenting Strategy Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3.4 Study Two . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.4.1 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.4.2 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.5 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.5.1 Parenting Strategy Implications from Varied Perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.5.2 Distinctions Among Parenting Strategies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
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4 Longitudinal Studies of Parenting Interventions: Overview and Methods 47
4.1 Recruitment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
4.2 Study Protocols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
4.2.1 Cyberbullying and Drama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
4.2.2 Risky Online Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
4.2.3 Configuring Parenting Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
4.2.4 Follow-Up Survey. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
4.3 Study Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
4.3.1 Interview Study Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
4.3.2 Survey Study Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.3.3 Bullying and Drama Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.3.4 Observed Length of Study Tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.4 Demographics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.4.1 A Note on Dropout Rates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.4.2 Interview Participant Demographics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.4.3 Survey Participant Demographics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4.5 Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4.5.1 Bullying and Drama Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
4.5.2 Risky Behavior Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
4.5.3 Usability Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
4.5.4 Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
5 Cyberbullying and Drama 63
5.1 Introduction and Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
5.1.1 Cyberbullying Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
5.1.2 Research on Drama and Related Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
5.2 Results. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
5.2.1 Bullying and Drama Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
5.2.2 Bullying and Drama Open Response Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
5.3 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
5.3.1 Parent and Child Perceptions of Drama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
5.3.2 Gendered Perceptions of Drama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
5.3.3 Impact of Technology-Mediated Power Imbalance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
6 Online Safety Risks 71
6.1 Introduction and Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
6.1.1 Rise in General Internet Use and Addiction Concerns . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
6.1.2 Pervasive Adolescent Use of Smartphones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
6.1.3 Research on Risks of Teen Smartphone Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
6.1.4 Challenges of Studying Adolescent Risky Online Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . 74
6.2 Results. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
6.2.1 Evaluations of Risk Attributes: Likelihood, Severity, and Confidence in Par-
ent and Child to Prevent Risks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
6.2.2 E↵ect of Study Condition on Risk Perception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
6.2.3 Sexual Predators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
6.2.4 Adult Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
6.2.5 Cyberbullying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
6.2.6 Screen Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
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6.3 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
7 Usability of Parenting Tools 83
7.1 Introduction and Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
7.1.1 Rules and Restrictions in the Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
7.1.2 Parenting and Time Management Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
7.1.3 Content Filtering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
7.1.4 Software Usability, Beyond Parenting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
7.2 Results. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
7.2.1 User Interface Issues: Ambiguous or Subpar Instructions . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
7.2.2 Tool Capability Issues: Poorly Executed Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
7.2.3 Parent-Child Experience: Disagreements Over Screen Time . . . . . . . . . . 96
7.2.4 Responses from Survey Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
7.3 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
7.3.1 Importance of Usability Testing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
7.3.2 Implications for Parental Control Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
7.3.3 Implications for Behavior Contracts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
7.3.4 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
8 Conclusions 105
8.1 Teen Privacy and Safety Tradeo↵s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
8.1.1 Can Parental Monitoring Reasonably Guarantee Children’s Safety? . . . . . . 106
8.1.2 Opportunities for Improving Digital Parenting Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . 107
8.2 Usability Challenges in Existing Parenting Interventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
8.3 Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
8.4 Takeaways for Future Work on Teen Privacy and Digital Parenting . . . . . . . . . . 110
A Parents’ and Teens’ Perspectives on Privacy: Study Materials 111
A.1 Interview Script—Parents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
A.2 Interview Script—Children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
B Digital Parenting: A Comparative View of Strategies: Study Materials 119
B.1 Expert Interview Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
B.2 Parent and Teen Survey Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
C Longitudinal Interview Study of Parenting Strategies: Materials 127
C.1 Entrance Interview Script: Parent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
C.2 Entrance Interview Script: Child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
C.3 Entrance Survey: Parent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
C.4 Entrance Survey: Child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
C.5 Weekly Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
C.6 Exit Interview Script: Parent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
C.7 Exit Interview Script: Child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
C.8 Exit Survey: Parent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
C.9 Exit Survey: Child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
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D Longitudinal Survey Study of Parenting Strategies: Materials 155
D.1 Entrance Survey: Parent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
D.2 Entrance Survey: Child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
D.3 Condition Assignment Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
D.4 Exit Survey: Parent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
D.5 Exit Survey: Child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
E Cyberbullying and Drama: Supplementary Tables 183
E.1 Bullying and Drama Scenario Response Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
E.1.1 Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
E.1.2 Surveys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
E.2 Bullying and Drama Code Use Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
F Online Safety Risks: Supplementary Tables 189
F.1 Models of Risk Likert Responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
F.1.1 Interview, Model 1: Entrance and Exit Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
F.1.2 Survey, Model 1: Entrance and Exit Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
F.1.3 Interview, Model 2: Exit Data Only . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
F.1.4 Survey, Model 2: Exit Data Only . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
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List of Figures
2.1 The number of parents and teens interviewed who mentioned each reason why teens
should have privacy from their parents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.2 The number of parents and teens interviewed who mentioned each reason why teens
should have limits to their privacy from their parents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.3 The number of parents and teens who said di↵erent areas were inappropriate for a
parent to go. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.4 The percentage of parents and teens who felt it ethical for parents to look through
teens’ text messages. Teens strongly opposed this practice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.5 The number of parents and teens we interviewed who reported the adults in their
household employing di↵erent types of technological monitoring. . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.6 The percentage of parents and teens who said they think similarly or di↵erently
about privacy in the physical world and privacy online. We exclude one parent and
two teens with whom we did not discuss this topic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4.1 A screenshot from Qustodio, displaying a schedule used to limit what time of day a
child can use their phone to access the internet. A red block indicates that internet
connections are disabled during that hour; grey indicates that internet connections
are enabled. Parents may set access hours di↵erently for each day of the week. . . . 51
4.2 Screenshots from The Smart Talk, an online behavior contract maintained by the
National PTA and LifeLock. These images show two rule prompts taken from the
contract’s section on screen time. In the top image, a user can drag the clock icon
left or right to decrease or increase the amount of screen time a child is allowed each
day. In the second image, a user can type a morning and evening time to govern
phone use. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
5.1 Achartdisplayingthepercentageofresponsestoeachscenariowheretherespondent
chose only the statement “This is bullying,” only the statement “This is typical teen
drama,” both statements, or neither statement, by bullying and drama scenario
(grouped along the x-axis). Each cluster of bars represents 100% of the responses
to the bullying and drama scenarios. In total, we received 402 responses from 123
pairs of interview and survey participants. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
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6.1 Comparisons of means for the attributes on which each risk was evaluated, across
parent and child. The left panel displays these means for the interview study, and
the right panel displays the same for the survey study. We can see that likelihood
was rated much lower than severity by both parents and children. Parents rated
their confidence in their (interviews and surveys) and their child’s (surveys only)
ability to prevent these risks from happening only slightly higher than they rated
the likelihood of a risk happening; children thought risks were very preventable and
very unlikely. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
6.2 Thesegraphshighlightparents’(toppanel)andchildren’s(bottompanel)evaluations
oftheseverityandlikelihoodofrisk,sortedbyincreasinglikelihood. Parentandchild
data were combined across interview and survey participants due to similarity. We
see that as likelihood increases, severity roughly decreases. Additionally, children’s
ratings of likelihood are very low for most risks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
6.3 Estimated number of hours per day of smartphone use for both parents and children
in the interview study. Note that six families in this study were not asked this ques-
tion. Some parents responded using phrases (e.g. “all day”), rather than numerical
estimates, which we translated to numerical estimates as indicated by the lighter
orange bars. Parents and children provided similar estimates at the lower end of the
spectrum, and those estimates diverged at the higher end. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
7.1 ParticipantsoftendidnotunderstandthatafeatureonlyworkedonAndroidphones,
sometimes debating whether to use the feature for minutes before realizing, or not
realizing at all. This family set up Call and SMS monitoring, despite the daughter
owning an iPhone. Note that the Android-only warnings are buried among text with
other content. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
7.2 This page allows parents to activate the panic button feature. Note that only ital-
icized light gray text indicates this is an Android-only feature. Also note that the
page focuses on teaching the child how to activate the panic button, but does not
educate the parent on where to look for panic alerts or find the child’s location. . . . 88
7.3 This menu allows parents to set device time limits on a per-day basis. Parents often
clicked the clock icon, which is a static page element. The italicized light gray text
next to the clock is clickable, and activates the time settings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
7.4 This menu allows parents to block or allow individual apps. The list of apps is
populated based on the child’s phone activity, and may take some time to begin
appearing. Parents were confused by this menu when apps did not immediately
appear, and often ignored these settings as a result. Also note the clickable clock
icon, which allows parents to set individual time limits for apps. . . . . . . . . . . . 90
7.5 This menu allows parents to block certain categories of websites from being accessed
by their child’s device, and the above is the default configuration. Qustodio did not
provide any definitions of these terms or explanations of how o↵ending content was
blocked. Additionally, some parents were confused about the meaning of the red
bars because no legend was provided. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
7.6 This is shown on the home page for The Smart Talk, and users select “Get Me
Started” to continue. However, some participants tried to click the colorful circles
above the button because of the italicized text suggesting they needed to “select
topics.” These icons are static page elements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
x