Involving Children in Content Control: A Collaborative and Education-Oriented Content Filtering App

Abstract

We present an approach to content control where parents and children collaboratively configure restrictions and filters, an approach that focuses on education rather than simple rule setting. We conducted an initial exploratory qualitative study with results highlighting the importance that parents place on avoiding inappropriate content. Building on these findings, we designed an initial prototype which allows parents and children to work together to select appropriate applications, providing an opportunity for parents to educate their children on what is appropriate. A second qualitative study with parents and children in the six to eight year-old age group revealed a favorable response to this approach. Our results suggest that parents felt that this approach helped facilitate discussions with their children and made the education more enjoyable and approachable, and that children may have also learned from the interaction. In addition, the approach provided some parents with insights into their children’s interests and understanding of their notions of appropriate and inappropriate content.

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Citation

Yasmeen Hashish, Andrea Bunt, and James E. Young (2014) Involving Children in Content Control: A Collaborative and Education-Oriented Content Filtering Approach. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2014), pp. 1797-1806.