Children’s Evaluation of Privacy Violations in Photo Sharing

• In Event: Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Topic - Technology, Media & Child Development

Abstract

In recent years, a “digital revolution” has introduced many new kinds of technology that increasingly permit sharing of personal data and thus raise potential privacy concerns. These include, for example, GPS tracking devices that surreptitiously reveal one’s location, and personal photos that may be accessed by others without the owner’s consent. But how and when do children evaluate digital privacy? Recent studies suggest that there may be important developmental changes From 4-17, children become increasingly negative about someone using a GPS device to track the location of objects that they do not own (Gelman et al., 2018). Developmental changes were especially pronounced when children were asked to reason about a person who was from the same social group and therefore presumed trustworthy (Kulkarni et al., 2019). However, to our knowledge, prior studies have focused on a single type of privacy violation: location tracking.
The present study was designed to examine children’s beliefs about digital privacy in a different context, namely, digital photo sharing. Children were asked to judge how OK or not-OK it was for a stranger to look on their computer to access photos that the child had taken on their own phone. We varied two factors: whether the stranger was mean or not, and whether the photos were public (e.g., a rainbow) or private (e.g., a home safe containing jewels). We thus varied trust (by manipulating whether the stranger was mean or not) and privacy (by manipulating whether the photos were public or private).
We recruited 96 children (24 each at ages 5-6, 7-8, and 9-10; mean ages 5.91, 7.96, and 9.83) and 244 adults. Participants were first presented with a stranger (either mean or neutral). They were then shown an object and were asked to imagine they took a picture of that object, on their own phone. After, participants were asked “Is it OK for [character] to look on his computer screen to see your picture of your [object]?” and to indicate how OK or not-OK it was. Responses were converted to a 6-point scale, where higher scores indicated greater approval of the character looking on his screen to see the child’s picture.
Results. Replicating prior results, negativity toward the character’s digital snooping increased with age, p < .001. Also as predicted, children were more negative toward the “mean” snooper than the neutral snooper, and more negative toward snooping of private than public photos, ps < .001. Finally, there was an age x privacy interaction, p < .001, indicating that the age effects were found on the items involving private items only.
Altogether, these results provide further evidence that conceptions of digital privacy undergo substantial change during early childhood, and that developmental changes are focused primarily in children’s understanding of privacy per se. With the increasing use of mobile devices that track object locations and reveal personal information, digital privacy is a considerable issue facing society. An urgent question for the future is how to best protect future generations from exploitation of their digital footprints.

Authors

• Nicole Cuneo, Yale University
  Presenting Author

• Steven Othello Roberts, Stanford University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Susan A Gelman, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
  Non-Presenting Author