More Web Proxy on the site http://driver.im/

research-article

Open access

Let Kids Wonder, Question and Make Mistakes: How the Designers of Children’s Technology Think about Child Well-being

Authors:

Rotem Landesman,

Alexis HinikerAuthors Info & Claims

IDC '23: Proceedings of the 22nd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference

Pages 310 - 321

https://doi.org/10.1145/3585088.3589371

Published: 19 June 2023 Publication History

All formats PDF

Abstract

To gain deeper insight into how the creators of children’s technology operationalize child well-being, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 24 industry professionals who create child-centered interactive technologies, including platforms, content, and policies. Interviewees’ descriptions of well-being clustered into four hierarchical categories, focusing on creating experiences that were: 1) safe, 2) usable, 3) educational, and 4) meaningful. We found that organizational culture influenced designers’ self-reported ability to create child-centered products, and companies with a culture that explicitly prioritized child well-being and drew on input from experts were able to scaffold even novice employees in attending to child users’ developmental needs. Finally, we found that companies struggled to define product metrics that reflected the full continuum of child well-being and often fell back on simplistic measures like engagement and download counts. We contribute a framework outlining current industry conceptualizations of designing for child well-being, with the depth of well-being support mapped to one axis and respect for children’s agency mapped to the other.

References

[1]

[n. d.]. The edtech triangle. https://www.everyschool.org/the-edtech-triangle

[2]

2022. Assembly Bill 2273. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2273

[3]

2022. The Digital Services Act package | Shaping Europe’s digital future. https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/digital-services-act-package

[4]

Kelly A Allen, Tracii Ryan, DeLeon L Gray, Dennis M McInerney, and Lea Waters. 2014. Social media use and social connectedness in adolescents: The positives and the potential pitfalls. The Educational and Developmental Psychologist 31, 1 (2014), 18–31.

[5]

UN General Assembly. 1989. Convention on the Rights of the Child. United Nations, Treaty Series 1577, 3 (1989), 1–23.

[6]

Liam Bannon, John Bowers, Peter Carstensen, John A Hughes, K Kuutti, James Pycock, Tom Rodden, Kjeld Schmidt, Dan Shapiro, Wes Sharrock, 1994. Informing CSCW System Requirements. Lancaster University.

[7]

Marina Umaschi Bers. 2012. Designing digital experiences for positive youth development: From playpen to playground. OUP USA.

[8]

Alicia Blum-Ross and Sonia Livingstone. 2018. The trouble with “screen time” rules. (2018).

[9]

Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke. 2006. Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative research in psychology 3, 2 (2006), 77–101.

[10]

Moira Burke, Cameron Marlow, and Thomas Lento. 2010. Social network activity and social well-being. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems. 1909–1912.

Digital Library

[11]

Benjamin Burroughs. 2017. YouTube kids: The app economy and mobile parenting. Social media+ society 3, 2 (2017), 2056305117707189.

[12]

Orfeu M Buxton, Anne-Marie Chang, James C Spilsbury, Taylor Bos, Helene Emsellem, and Kristen L Knutson. 2015. Sleep in the modern family: protective family routines for child and adolescent sleep. Sleep health 1, 1 (2015), 15–27.

[13]

Rafael A Calvo and Dorian Peters. 2013. Promoting psychological wellbeing: loftier goals for new technologies [opinion]. IEEE Technology and Society Magazine 32, 4 (2013), 19–21.

[14]

Rafael A Calvo and Dorian Peters. 2014. Positive computing: technology for wellbeing and human potential. MIT press.

Digital Library

[15]

Marta E. Cecchinato, John Rooksby, Alexis Hiniker, Sean Munson, Kai Lukoff, Luigina Ciolfi, Anja Thieme, and Daniel Harrison. 2019. Designing for Digital Wellbeing: A Research & Practice Agenda. In Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, Glasgow Scotland Uk, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290607.3298998

Digital Library

[16]

Carly Cheevers and Mick O’connell. 2013. Developing an index of well-being for nine-year-old Irish children. Child Indicators Research 6, 2 (2013), 213–236.

[17]

Justin Cheng, Michael Bernstein, Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, and Jure Leskovec. 2017. Anyone can become a troll: Causes of trolling behavior in online discussions. In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM conference on computer supported cooperative work and social computing. 1217–1230.

Digital Library

[18]

Esther Yin-Nei Cho and Fuk-Yuen Yu. 2020. A review of measurement tools for child wellbeing. Children and Youth Services Review 119 (Dec. 2020), 105576. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105576

[19]

A.H. Chu. 2016. “You make what you measure.”. https://medium.com/quality-works/you-make-what-you-measure-fc76ad903cc1

[20]

Pieter MA Desmet and Anna E Pohlmeyer. 2013. Positive design: An introduction to design for subjective well-being. International journal of design 7, 3 (2013).

[21]

Tobias Dienlin and Niklas Johannes. 2022. The impact of digital technology use on adolescent well-being. Dialogues in clinical neuroscience (2022).

[22]

Malte Elson, Christopher J Ferguson, Mary Gregerson, Jerri Lynn Hogg, James Ivory, Dana Klisanin, Patrick M Markey, Deborah Nichols, Shahbaz Siddiqui, and June Wilson. 2019. Do policy statements on media effects faithfully represent the science?Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science 2, 1 (2019), 12–25.

[23]

Shalom M. Fisch, Rosemarie T. Truglio, and Charlotte F. Cole. 1999. The Impact of Sesame Street on Preschool Children: A Review and Synthesis of 30 Years’ Research. Media Psychology 1, 2 (June 1999), 165–190. https://doi.org/10.1207/s1532785xmep0102_5 Publisher: Routledge _eprint: https://doi.org/10.1207/s1532785xmep0102_5.

[24]

5 Rights Foundation. 2019. Demystifying the Age Appropriate Design Code. (2019). https://5rightsfoundation.com/uploads/demystifying-the-age-appropriate-design-code.pdf

[25]

5 Rights Foundation. 2021. Pathways: How digital design puts children at risk. https://5rightsfoundation.com/uploads/Pathways-how-digital-design-puts-children-at-risk.pdf

[26]

Howard Gardner and Katie Davis. 2013. The app generation: How today’s youth navigate identity, intimacy, and imagination in a digital world. Yale University Press.

Digital Library

[27]

David Hammer and Leema K. Berland. 2014. Confusing claims for data: A critique of common practices for presenting qualitative research on learning. Journal of the Learning Sciences 23, 1 (2014), 37–46.

[28]

Marc Hassenzahl, Stephanie Heidecker, Kai Eckoldt, Sarah Diefenbach, and Uwe Hillmann. 2012. All you need is love: Current strategies of mediating intimate relationships through technology. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) 19, 4 (2012), 1–19.

Digital Library

[29]

JM Healey. 2004. Early television exposure and subsequent attention problems in children. Pediatrics 113, 4 (2004), 917–918.

[30]

Alexis Hiniker, Sharon S Heung, Sungsoo Hong, and Julie A Kientz. 2018. Coco’s videos: an empirical investigation of video-player design features and children’s media use. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1–13.

Digital Library

[31]

Alexis Hiniker, Jenny S. Radesky, Sonia Livingstone, and Alicia Blum-Ross. 2019. Moving Beyond "The Great Screen Time Debate" in the Design of Technology for Children. In Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, Glasgow Scotland Uk, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290607.3311745

Digital Library

[32]

Alexis Hiniker, Hyewon Suh, Sabina Cao, and Julie A Kientz. 2016. Screen time tantrums: How families manage screen media experiences for toddlers and preschoolers. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems. 648–660.

Digital Library

[33]

Haley Hinkle and Laura M Moybb. 2022. Www.democraticmedia.org. https://www.democraticmedia.org/sites/default/files/field/public-files/2022/unfair_design_practices_petition_for_rulemaking_final_combined_filing.pdf

[34]

Felicia A Huppert. 2014. The state of wellbeing science. Concepts, measures, interventions, and policies: UK John Wiley & Sons (2014).

[35]

Stevi Jackson and Sue Scott. 1999. Risk anxiety and the social construction of childhood. Risk and sociocultural theory: New directions and perspectives (1999), 86–107.

[36]

Russell Jago, Tom Baranowski, Janice C Baranowski, Deborah Thompson, and KA Greaves. 2005. BMI from 3–6 y of age is predicted by TV viewing and physical activity, not diet. International journal of obesity 29, 6 (2005), 557–564.

[37]

T Jagušt, I Botički, and H-J So. 2018. A review of research on bridging the gap between formal and informal learning with technology in primary school contexts. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 34, 4 (2018), 417–428.

[38]

Hilda K Kabali, Matilde M Irigoyen, Rosemary Nunez-Davis, Jennifer G Budacki, Sweta H Mohanty, Kristin P Leister, and Robert L Bonner Jr. 2015. Exposure and use of mobile media devices by young children. Pediatrics 136, 6 (2015), 1044–1050.

[39]

Amanda Lenhart and Kellie Owens. 2021. The unseen teen: The challenges of building healthy tech for young people. Data & Society (2021).

[40]

Dong Liu, Roy F Baumeister, Chia-chen Yang, and Baijing Hu. 2019. Digital communication media use and psychological well-being: A meta-analysis. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 24, 5 (2019), 259–273.

[41]

Duri Long and Brian Magerko. 2020. What is AI literacy? Competencies and design considerations. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems. 1–16.

Digital Library

[42]

Melissa Mazmanian and Simone Lanette. 2017. " Okay, One More Episode" An Ethnography of Parenting in the Digital Age. In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM conference on computer supported cooperative work and social computing. 2273–2286.

[43]

Emily McReynolds, Sarah Hubbard, Timothy Lau, Aditya Saraf, Maya Cakmak, and Franziska Roesner. 2017. Toys that listen: A study of parents, children, and internet-connected toys. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems. 5197–5207.

Digital Library

[44]

Amy Orben and Andrew K Przybylski. 2019. The association between adolescent well-being and digital technology use. Nature human behaviour 3, 2 (2019), 173–182.

[45]

Liliana Pasquale, Paola Zippo, Cliona Curley, Brian O’Neill, and Marina Mongiello. 2022. Digital Age of Consent and Age Verification: Can They Protect Children?IEEE Software 39, 3 (2022), 50–57. https://doi.org/10.1109/MS.2020.3044872

[46]

Dorian Peters and Naseem Ahmadpour. 2020. Digital wellbeing through design: Evaluation of a professional development workshop on wellbeing-supportive design. In 32nd Australian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. 148–157.

Digital Library

[47]

Jenny Radesky, Yolanda Linda Reid Chassiakos, Nusheen Ameenuddin, Dipesh Navsaria, 2020. Digital advertising to children. Pediatrics 146, 1 (2020).

[48]

Jenny Radesky and Alexis Hiniker. 2021. From moral panic to systemic change: Making child-centered design the default. International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction (2021), 100351.

Digital Library

[49]

Jenny Radesky, Alexis Hiniker, Caroline McLaren, Eliz Akgun, Alexandria Schaller, Heidi M Weeks, Scott Campbell, and Ashley N Gearhardt. 2022. Prevalence and characteristics of manipulative design in mobile applications used by children. JAMA Network Open 5, 6 (2022), e2217641–e2217641.

[50]

Eric E Rasmussen, Autumn Shafer, Malinda J Colwell, Shawna White, Narissra Punyanunt-Carter, Rebecca L Densley, and Holly Wright. 2016. Relation between active mediation, exposure to Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, and US preschoolers’ social and emotional development. Journal of Children and Media 10, 4 (2016), 443–461.

[51]

Mabel L Rice, Aletha C Huston, Rosemarie Truglio, and John C Wright. 1990. Words from" Sesame Street": Learning vocabulary while viewing.Developmental psychology 26, 3 (1990), 421.

[52]

Victoria Rideout and Michael B Robb. 2020. The Common Sense census: Media use by kids age zero to eight. San Francisco, CA: Common Sense Media 263 (2020), 65.

[53]

Richard M Ryan and Edward L Deci. 2000. Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being.American psychologist 55, 1 (2000), 68.

[54]

Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci. 2001. On Happiness and Human Potentials: A Review of Research on Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-Being. Annual Review of Psychology 52, 1 (2001), 141–166. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.141 _eprint: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.141.

[55]

Carly Shuler, Zachary Levine, and Jinny Ree. 2012. iLearn II An analysis of the education category of Apple’s app store. (2012).

[56]

Kiley Sobel, Arpita Bhattacharya, Alexis Hiniker, Jin Ha Lee, Julie A Kientz, and Jason C Yip. 2017. It wasn’t really about the PokéMon: parents’ perspectives on a location-based mobile game. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1483–1496.

Digital Library

[57]

Maarten Van Mechelen, Line Have Musaeus, Ole Sejer Iversen, Christian Dindler, and Arthur Hjorth. 2021. A Systematic Review of Empowerment in Child-Computer Interaction Research. In Interaction Design and Children(IDC ’21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 119–130. https://doi.org/10.1145/3459990.3460701

Digital Library

[58]

Mariek M P Vanden Abeele. 2021. Digital Wellbeing as a Dynamic Construct. Communication Theory 31, 4 (Nov. 2021), 932–955. https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtaa024

[59]

Ruut Veenhoven. 2007. Subjective measures of well-being. In Human well-being. Springer, 214–239.

[60]

Bridget Colacchio Wesley, Julia Pryce, and Gina M Samuels. 2020. Meaning and essence of child well-being according to child welfare professionals. Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal 37, 4 (2020), 425–441.

[61]

Bieke Zaman and Marije Nouwen. 2016. Parental controls: advice for parents, researchers and industry. EU Kids Online (2016).

Cited By

Ann Rose EThomas M(2024)Generation Alpha and Learning EcosystemsPreparing Students for the Future Educational Paradigm10.4018/979-8-3693-1536-1.ch002(19-46)Online publication date: 15-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.4018/979-8-3693-1536-1.ch002
Cai ZWei S(2024)From Viewers to Teachers: Child-Led Teaching Strategies and Family Participation in YouTube How-TosProceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference10.1145/3628516.3655821(396-407)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3628516.3655821
Baughan AFu YIzenman ESchwamm SAlsabeh DPowell NHunt ERich MBickham DRadesky JHiniker A(2024)Investigating Attention and Normative Dissociation in Children's Social Video GamesProceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference10.1145/3628516.3655808(30-43)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3628516.3655808
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Let Kids Wonder, Question and Make Mistakes: How the Designers of Children’s Technology Think about Child Well-being
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Empirical studies in HCI
  2. Interaction design
    1. Empirical studies in interaction design
2. Social and professional topics
  1. User characteristics
    1. Age
      1. Children

Recommendations

"Money shouldn't be money!" : An Examination of Financial Literacy and Technology for Children Through Co-Design
IDC '23: Proceedings of the 22nd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference

Financial literacy is the use of knowledge, skills, and behaviors around managing financial resources. Despite its importance, less is known from a Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and child-computer interaction perspective about what financial literacy ...
Parent-Child Interaction in Children’s Learning How to Use a New Application
Intelligent Tutoring Systems
Abstract
This study investigated how parents support their children when they are learning how to use a new application in a situation where the parents do not have any practical knowledge of it and how parental support influences the children’s learning. ...
Let's Play!: Digital and Analog Play between Preschoolers and Parents
CHI '18: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Play is an enjoyable and developmentally useful part of early childhood, and parent-child play is a highly productive mechanism by which children learn to participate in the world. We conducted an observational lab study to examine how 15 parent-child ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

IDC '23: Proceedings of the 22nd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference

June 2023

824 pages

ISBN:9798400701313

DOI:10.1145/3585088

Copyright © 2023 Owner/Author.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives International 4.0 License.

Sponsors

SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 19 June 2023

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article
Research
Refereed limited

Conference

IDC '23

Sponsor:

SIGCHI

IDC '23: Interaction Design and Children

June 19 - 23, 2023

IL, Chicago, USA

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 172 of 578 submissions, 30%

Upcoming Conference

IDC '25

Sponsor:
sigchi

Interaction Design and Children

June 23 - 26, 2025

Reykjavik , Iceland

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

4
Total Citations
View Citations
817
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)509
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)45

Reflects downloads up to 18 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Ann Rose EThomas M(2024)Generation Alpha and Learning EcosystemsPreparing Students for the Future Educational Paradigm10.4018/979-8-3693-1536-1.ch002(19-46)Online publication date: 15-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.4018/979-8-3693-1536-1.ch002
Cai ZWei S(2024)From Viewers to Teachers: Child-Led Teaching Strategies and Family Participation in YouTube How-TosProceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference10.1145/3628516.3655821(396-407)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3628516.3655821
Baughan AFu YIzenman ESchwamm SAlsabeh DPowell NHunt ERich MBickham DRadesky JHiniker A(2024)Investigating Attention and Normative Dissociation in Children's Social Video GamesProceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference10.1145/3628516.3655808(30-43)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3628516.3655808
Pothong KLivingstone SColvert APschetz L(2024)Applying children’s rights to digital products: Exploring competing priorities in designProceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference10.1145/3628516.3655789(93-104)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3628516.3655789

View Options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

HTML Format

View this article in HTML Format.

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents