Exploring a Design Space of Digital Interventions for Early Adolescents’ Disengagement from Technology Overuse

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Abstract

The widespread use of digital devices among children and teenagers has raised concerns about overuse, particularly for early adolescents (ages 11–14), who have unique developmental needs and reportedly spend more time with technology than any other age group. While numerous parental control tools exist to mitigate technology overuse, most overlook early adolescents’ perspectives. As a result, these tools often face resistance, contribute to parent-child conflicts, and may even be abandoned. Despite research on various mediation strategies, limited work has focused on designing digital interventions that actively incorporate early adolescents’ perspectives, particularly in the context of tech disengagement.

This thesis addresses this gap by investigating early adolescents’ perceptions of suitable interventions for managing their tech use and evaluating existing solutions against their preferences. Through a co-design study, we examine their conceptualization of tech disengagement and the design factors they prioritize. Building upon these insights and synthesizing prior relevant literature, we then introduce an initial design space for digital interventions tailored to this demographic. To further explore areas of alignment and divergence between early adolescents’ and their parents’ viewpoints, we conduct an elicitation study comparing their preferences within this design space. Finally, we systematically review prior research on tech disengagement interventions and analyze existing parental control applications to assess how well current solutions align with the needs and expectations of early adolescents, identified within our proposed design space.

This research contributes to the field of child-computer interaction by revealing early adolescents’ perceptions of tech disengagement, defining and exploring an initial design space for early adolescent-centric digital interventions, and systematically analyzing existing research and current solutions to identify gaps and areas for further development. These insights can be leveraged by HCI researchers and practitioners to ground future design explorations of digital interventions that better support early adolescents in managing their tech use.

Citation

Ananta Chowdhury. Exploring a Design Space of Digital Interventions for Early Adolescents’ Disengagement from Technology Overuse. Ph.D. Thesis (2025). University of Manitoba, Canada.

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