Exploring A Design Space for Digital Interventions Facilitating Early Adolescents’ Tech Disengagement: A Parent-Child Perspective

Abstract

Children’s excessive technology use remains a significant challenge for parents, especially with early adolescents, given their growing independence and resistance towards parent-set device restrictions. Despite numerous parental control tools, there is limited research on tailored solutions for this age group. This paper advances this design problem by introducing and studying a child-centric design space for digital interventions targeting early adolescents’ technology overuse. Synthesizing literature on mediation strategies, early adolescents’ perspectives, and self-regulation, we first identify four pertinent design dimensions (early adolescents’ agency, supportive parental engagement, mentorship style, and motivation). Using these dimensions, we then create three contrastive design concepts as video prototypes. Utilizing the prototypes in an online study with 13 early adolescents (ages 11-14) and their parents, we provide insights into how both groups conceptualize effective digital interventions. Our findings highlight areas of consensus (e.g., granting early adolescents’ agency) as well as considerable variability (e.g., differing preferred mentorship approaches).

Publisher Link

https://doi-org.uml.idm.oclc.org/10.1145/3679318.3685382

Citation

Ananta Chowdhury and Andrea Bunt. 2024. Exploring A Design Space for Digital Interventions Facilitating Early Adolescents’ Tech Disengagement: A Parent-Child Perspective. In Proceedings of the 13th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (NordiCHI '24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 47, 1–17. https://doi-org.uml.idm.oclc.org/10.1145/3679318.3685382