Prakriti Dumaru
Abstract
Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often seek comfort from devices (e.g., smartphones) to deal with social overstimulation. However, such reliance exposes them to inappropriate digital content and increases susceptibility to mimicry and social vulnerability. Thus, parents having children with ASD encounter unique challenges in regulating their device usage, which are little addressed in the existing literature on parental mediation. As we begin to address this gap, we designed low-fidelity prototypes centered around open communication and self-regulation, which we refined based on the feedback from six ASD experts in two focus groups. We evaluated updated designs (presented in form of storyboards) through semi-structured interviews with 25 parents whose children with ASD (aged below 14) are active Internet users. Our study joins the body of work on parental mediation; our findings provide insights into inclusive parental control tools for children with ASD, and offer guidelines for future research in these directions.
1 INTRODUCTION
It is estimated that 1% of the world population is on Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) [125] and according to CDC [73], 1 in every 36 children in the U.S. have ASD 1. From a neurodiversity standpoint, ASD is characterized by differing cognitive styles that entail different ways of sensing, socializing, and communicating [110]. Individuals with ASD have restricted interests and repetitive behaviors, which lead to their difficulties in social interaction [58]. Hence, parents often use devices 2 as a means to deal with the overstimulation of children with ASD resulting from their social interaction [47, 77, 82, 90]. Consequently, they are more fixated on devices compared to their neurotypical peers [62, 72, 75, 89]. The overreliance on technology exposes children to inappropriate digital content; this problem is further aggravated for children with ASD through increasing their susceptibility to sheer mimicry and social vulnerability [82, 92, 98, 109]. However, restrictive mediation strategies of parents often fail to regulate the technology usage for the children with ASD, rather leading to externalizing behavior problems [61, 82].
There are two major issues related to restrictive mediation for children with ASD. First, their need for logical reasoning to understand the rules enforced by parents [32, 61]. Children with ASD do not blindly follow the rules set by their parents and expect to understand the deliberate reasoning behind parental regulation. Thus, parents need to have open communication with them and explain the rationale behind restrictions (e.g., why they are not allowed to watch certain types of videos on YouTube). Second, their difficulties with impulse control and self-regulation due to executive functioning disorder [4]. These issues lead to challenges in parental mediation where children cannot differentiate between right and wrong (e.g., sharing sensitive personal information with others). Thus, parental guidance to instill self-regulation is of sheer importance.
To this end, the parental control tool should be inclusive for children with ASD through considering open communication and self-regulation in design. However, a little study to date focused on understanding the challenges faced by parents of children with ASD in regulating their device usage, and how to translate their expectations into the design of inclusive parental control tool. We begin to address this gap in our work and embed the values of open communication and self-regulation into our low-fidelity prototype design. In particular, we addressed the following research questions:
• | RQ1: What are the challenges faced by parents of children with ASD to regulate their smartphone and tablet usage? | ||||
• | RQ2: In addressing these challenges, how do parents of children with ASD perceive the features in a parental control tool that support open communication and self-regulation? | ||||
To address these research questions, we created a low-fidelity prototype (see §3) accommodating the features reflecting our two design principles, on top of Google’s parental control tool, Family Link 3. In particular, we considered the controls related to screen time limits, location tracking, content control on YouTube, and content sharing in Google Photos. We first conducted two focus group sessions, each with three ASD experts (see §4.1). We used feedback from the experts to refine our initial designs for children with ASD (see §4.2). Using the updated designs, we developed five scenario-based storyboards (see Figure 3, and §B in Appendix). We used these storyboards in semi-structured interviews with 25 parents of children with ASD, aged 13 or below, who are active Internet users (see §5.2). The storyboards served as stimuli during interviews, prompting our participants to imagine, reflect on, and discuss how their parenting experiences would benefit from the presented designs within each narrative.
The findings from our study unpack four key challenges faced by parents of children with ASD in regulating their device usage: overfixation on devices, sheer mimicry of content from YouTube, heightened risk for social vulnerability, and frequent instances of eloping (see §6.1). In addressing these challenges, we unveil parents’ perceptions of our designs supporting open communication and self-regulation. The parents appreciated our designs providing contextual information to streamline the thought process of their children, bridging the communication gap in multiple scenarios, as well as guiding children to grasp social cues (see §6.2.1). In instilling self-regulation, parents found our prototype valuable as a neutral rule enforcer, for helping them to set expectations using visual cues and foster internalizing and repetitive learning for children through leveraging their tendency to hyperfocus (see §6.2.2). Based on our findings, we present a set of recommendations on further customizing parental control tools for children with ASD, and offer guidelines for future research in these directions.
2 RELATED WORK
2.1 Device Use and Children with ASD
ASD, also known as neurodiversity is characterized by differing cognitive styles, which entails varying ways of socializing, communicating, and sensing. Due to these differences, individuals with ASD have restricted interests and repetitive behavior, which lead to difficulties in social interaction and impulse control [58, 110]. A body of work [19, 28, 39, 57, 74, 75, 80, 83, 96, 119] focused on assistive technologies to help them enhance their social skills, express and regulate emotions, and improve their speech and language. To this end, parents reported engaging with electronic media as a preferred activity for children with ASD [64], who are exposed to digital screens earlier in childhood compared to their neurotypical peers [108]. A study conducted to evaluate the involvement with video games within a family revealed that the children with ASD tend to spend more time playing than their typically developing (TD) siblings [63]; these findings are in line with other studies [20, 108, 111] pointing to the tendency of children with ASD getting fixated on their interests and avoiding social interaction, and as a result, they spend excessive amounts of time on screen media.
The existing literature [61, 74, 75, 82] on media use by children with ASD primarily focused on traditional media forms, such as television and video games. The study of Nally et al. [82] explored the challenges of parents in managing television viewing by children on the spectrum, and discussed how externalizing behavior problems could lead to parental stress. While viewing television, children with ASD are prone to sheer mimicry due to their emotional immaturity in differentiating between right and wrong [82, 92, 98, 109]. Further, children with ASD often fall victim to online bullying while playing video games [123, 124], which is attributed to their difficulties with grasping social cues [10, 53]. In a separate study with seven parents from South Africa [38], Ebrahim et al. looked into how screen time could impact other activities for children with ASD. To this end, Kuo et al. [61] examined the strategies used by parents to regulate their children’s television viewing and video gaming, and revealed how these strategies vary based on whether their children are on the spectrum or not. With the increasing adoption of newer forms of media, such as smartphones and tablets by children with ASD, there is a lack of systematic understanding of the challenges in parental mediation in these contexts. We addressed this gap in our first research question (see RQ1 in §1).
2.2 Parental Mediation for Children with ASD
Prior studies [26, 42, 45, 49, 78] pointed out the significance of parental regulation as a key intervention strategy to regulate children’s exposure to digital media, where several work [15, 46] emphasized such intervention from parents at an early age of the children with ASD. Parental regulation of children’s media usage is rooted in parental mediation theory [114]; drawing upon Bandura’s social learning theory [9], it explores how parental involvement mitigates negative behavior of children stemming from their exposure to inappropriate media contents. Parental mediation theory was initially developed to address media consumption by children, which encompassed three mediation strategies: restrictive mediation, active mediation, and co-viewing [114]. Here, restrictive mediation involved establishing rules and limitations for media consumption, while active mediation focused on discussing the media content that children encountered. Co-viewing refers to joint media engagement, e.g., watching television together with children. With the increasing prevalence of smartphones and tablets among children, online risks have escalated for them, necessitating the adaptation for online parental mediation [70].
Restrictive mediation is a frequently used strategy of parents with children on the spectrum in the context of video gaming and television viewing [61], where parents use such mediation more on their children with ASD as compared to their neurotypical children [25, 60, 61]. Here, deliberate selection of content, and being vigilant on what is being accessed by children with ASD are typical examples of restrictive mediation strategies used by their parents [112]. However, restrictive mediation could lead to externalizing behavior problems for children with ASD [25, 38, 65]. For instance, while they are watching television, suddenly switching it off may trigger crying tantrums [82], which can be attributed to their challenges in making a transition from one activity to another without having sufficient time for preparation and adjustment [30]. To this end, restrictive strategies are effective when parents are consistent with rules, and indicate the consequences of ignoring them [61]. This can be explained based on children’s need for understanding the reasoning behind rules set by parents [32, 61], and their difficulties with impulse control and self-regulation due to executive functioning disorder [3, 4]. Thus, the parental control tool for children with ASD should embed the values associated with fostering open communication and instilling self-regulation.
Open communication involves frequent discussions with children about their online behavior [37, 69, 117]. It is closely related to active mediation, originating from Valkenburg et al. scales for television viewing [114] and is later adapted for online parental mediation. Prior studies [34, 121, 122] reported that discussing with children about their online experiences could help parents to prevent or reduce online risks. In these contexts, self-regulation is defined as the ability to modulate one’s own emotions and behaviors by monitoring, inhibiting, and evaluating oneself compared to given societal standards [2, 59, 81]. It is one of the dimensions of parental mediation under the TOSS framework [120]. Prior work [4] indicates that children with ASD typically have difficulty with impulse control and self-monitoring due to executive functioning disorder. Thus, they require parental assistance to help them guide their online behavior [6]. However, a little study to date focused on translating the values of open communication and self-regulation into designing inclusive parental control tool for children with ASD. To this end, we reimagined the design of parental control tool and addressed this gap in our second research question (see RQ2 in §1).
3 INITIAL DESIGN
In this section, we present an overview of how we applied our design principles to the initial version of design 4. In mapping design principles, we considered four different controls provided by Google’s parental control app, including screen time limits (Screen Time), content regulation on YouTube (YouTube), photo sharing regulation through Google Photos (Google Photos), and location tracking (Location).
Figure 1: Stimulus for Open Communication
3.1 Stimulus for Open Communication
Prior research [32, 61] indicate that children with ASD 5 do not blindly follow the rules set by their parents due to their need for understanding the deliberative reasoning behind parental regulation. Further, they lack a proper understanding of socially normative behaviors due to their difficulties with grasping social cues, which can lead them to mimic inappropriate behavior that they come across online [27, 82, 88, 95]. Thus, considering children’s need for concreteness [43], parents should clearly explain the rationales behind a rule (e.g., why they are not allowed to watch certain types of videos on YouTube) and socially normative behaviors (e.g., why certain behaviors that they come across online, should not be mimicked). However, practical obscurity afforded by personal mobile devices presents unique challenges for parents to remain cognizant of their children’s online activities, and thus, they find it difficult to provide their children with the context while explaining a rule [16]. To this end, we focus on providing support for parents through cues to initiate the conversation and equip them with insights into children’s online activities for a meaningful discussion with them.
Our designs provide informational support within the controls to provide specific contexts for discussion with children. For instance, in the case of YouTube, we provide insights into videos watched by children including a thumbnail image, title, number of times the video is watched, and duration (see component A in Figure 1a). As parents notice that their child watched an inappropriate video, they can initiate a conversation with them by sending a reminder along with a date, time, and customized message (see component B in Figure 1a). During the conversation, they can leverage insights provided by the tool 6 to explain why certain content is inappropriate for them to watch. In the context of Location, we provide logs of previous locations (see Figure 1b), which would serve as a starting point for discussion with children about their whereabouts. Further, the control would alert parents if their children go outside of safe locations (see §3.2.1).
Figure 2: Aide for Instilling Self-Regulation
3.2 Aide for Instilling Self-Regulation
It has been estimated that 41% to 78% of individuals with ASD exhibit executive functioning disorder [71]. Due to executive functioning disorder, they face challenges with self-regulation and impulse control, which make them more vulnerable to online risks [3, 4, 48, 67]. In this regard, parents should nudge their children towards appropriate behavior as suggested in existing literature [43], and emphasize on continual guidance considering children’s difficulties in transferring their learning from one context to another [31]. Hence, to instill self-regulation in children, our design focuses on the provision to nudge them toward expected behavior and to provide them with repetitive guidance.
3.2.1 Setting Boundaries.
We provide provision for parents to set safe zones for their children (see Figure 2b). They can specify a periphery to define a safe zone, as well as set a time range when children are expected to be within that zone. Whenever a child goes out of the safe zone, they receive a nudge from the tool contributing to repetitive guidance, where an alert is sent to their parents as well.
3.2.2 Reinforcement Strategies.
Reinforcement is an important component of self-regulation, effective in controlling behavior, motivation, and learning [8]. The prior study [99] shows that reinforcement strategies can be taught by parents to support the growing independence of children. In Screen Time, we interspersed components of reinforcement to regulate children’s usage of devices (see Figure 2a), where parents can communicate a list of chores (e.g., cleaning the yard) for their children to complete and earn screen time (e.g., 20 minutes, etc) as a reward. Parents also have the provision to revoke screen time if a chore is not completed.
3.2.3 Nudge Children for not Sharing Personal Information.
Children are vulnerable to online victimization as they may naively or unwittingly disclose sensitive information [52]. Thus, there is an immense need to make children vigilant about sharing personal information. To this end, we introduced a feature in Google Photos to nudge and guide children regarding information sharing (see Figure 2c), where parents can prompt them to inspect a photo before sharing it, to ensure it would not reveal certain personal information (e.g. vehicle license plate, school name, etc.) to sharees. Parents can edit the list of personal information that their children should look for in a photo, where the prompt would provide continual guidance to children by nudging them every time they attempt to share a photo.
4 DESIGN REFINEMENT
4.1 Methodology: Focus Group Discussion with ASD Experts
We conducted two focus group sessions (audio-recorded), each with three ASD experts (see Table 1 for details) to gather their feedback and suggestions for refining our initial designs, as well as to identify new features in the realm of regulating children’s device usage. Our participants had at least 10 years of research experience in ASD. The study was conducted in May 2023. Our study was approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at our university.
| PID | Gender | Age Range | Session | Area of Expertise | Experience (Years) |
| E1 | F | 40-44 | Session 2 | Early Childhood Special Education and Applied Behavior Analysis | 20 |
| E2 | F | 35-39 | Session 1 | Autism, Disability, Mental Health, Post-secondary Education, Vocational Rehabilitation | 15 |
| E3 | F | 35-39 | Session 1 | Applied Behavior Analysis, treatment of challenging behavior in individuals with ASD/IDD | 12 |
| E4 | F | 30-34 | Session 2 | Autism and ABA | 17 |
| E5 | M | 50-54 | Session 1 | Applied Behavior Analysis/Special Education | 24 |
| E6 | F | 30-34 | Session 2 | Autism, Behavior Analysis | 16 |
Table 1: Demographics of ASD Experts (N=6)
4.1.1 Procedure.
For participant recruitment, we reached out to faculties in the Department of Special Education and Rehabilitation at our university, whose primary research focus is in the field of ASD. When a faculty showed interest to participate in our focus group session, we emailed them a link to the Informed Consent Document (ICD). Once they signed ICD, we sent them a link to enter their availability to schedule the session. We conducted the focus group session over Zoom and used Google Jamboard 7 for remote collaboration. The session was moderated by the first author of this paper, who was accompanied by a notetaker and observer. At the beginning of focus group discussion, we provided the ASD experts with a brief overview of our research goals, and made them familiar with the ground rules that we would follow to conduct the session. Beginning with an icebreaker question (e.g., what motivated them to research the field of ASD), the remaining session was divided into two parts: design portrayal and brainstorming exercise.
Design Portrayal. We presented the ASD experts with our initial designs (see §3), where two designs were shown in each session (Session 1: Screen Time and YouTube; Session 2: Location and Google Photos). For each design, at first, the experts took a minute to get familiar with its features and functionalities. Then, we asked them about how the design would fit into the contexts of children and what changes should be incorporated to make it better work for them. The same process was repeated for the other design.
Brainstorming Exercise. We asked the experts ‘How Might We’ 8 questions, catering to our design principles: fostering open communication (see §3.1) and instilling self-regulation (see §3.2). The experts worked individually for two minutes to come up with ideas relating to each question. They were instructed to write down and sketch their ideas on the Google Jamboard assigned to them (see Figure 10 in Appendix). After two minutes, each expert presented their ideas to all participants explaining how it might work, how it might benefit parents and their children, and what might be the challenges and limitations of the proposed idea. While one expert would present ideas, others could add to, or make comments on her ideas.
At the end, participants responded to a set of demographic questionnaires. Each session took between 90 and 120 minutes to complete. Each participant was compensated with a $25 Amazon.com gift card.
4.1.2 Analysis.
We transcribed the audio recordings from focus group discussions and performed thematic analysis [18, 21, 22] on transcripts, where we took an inductive approach. In this ground-up approach, codes are derived from the data without preconceived notions, which allows the narrative to emerge from raw data itself without trying to fit it into the preconceptions [18, 21, 22]. Each session’s data was coded by two independent researchers. We compared individual codes and resolved any inconsistencies between each other’s codes. Finally, we organized and taxonomized our codes into higher-level categories, which correspond to the refinement of our designs (see §4.2).
4.2 Findings
In this section, we present how we refined our initial design based on the feedback from ASD experts, aimed at regulating device usage for children. We highlight the modifications of existing features from the initial design in §4.2.1 and the new features suggested by experts in §4.2.2, §4.2.3, §4.2.4, and §4.2.5.
4.2.1 Reconceptualization.
The feedback from experts led us to reconceptualize our designs for children in the contexts of behavioral contract, easing the transition, and self-reminder.
Behavioral Contract in the Realm of Goal Setting. In the Screen Time, experts suggested redefining our design from chores-based (see Figure 2a) to behavioral contract-based screen time reinforcement, where parents can define behavior goals (e.g., deep breathing exercises, communicating with friends, etc.) for their children to accomplish and earn screen time as a reward (see Figure 5 in Appendix). Also, we removed the feature of revoking screen time as per the expert’s suggestion, where E5 mentioned, ’...I’d advocate against taking away...if I am expecting that I am going to get something and then all of a sudden you tell me, I don’t get it. That can evoke pretty major behavior problems for individuals on the spectrum, who tend to like predictability and routine a little more.”
Nudges to Ease the Transition. In the initial design, we provided parents with an option to send an alert to children before their screen time comes to an end (see Figure 2a), where the experts emphasized that children may need multiple nudges to ease their transition from device usage to other tasks. We thus, updated the design to enable parents to send multiple notifications along with a message for each notification (see Figure 5 in Appendix).
Self-reminder. In the initial design for YouTube, we provided parents with a provision to send a reminder to their children along with a date, time, and message to have open communication whenever they watch inappropriate videos (see component B in Figure 1a). Here, all the experts pointed out that receiving such a reminder could be emotionally triggering for children as they fixate on the fear of repercussions. As per their feedback, we updated the design letting parents set a self-reminder to initiate open communication with their children (see Figure 6 in Appendix). While experts pointed to the heightened risks for children to be manipulated by online predators due to their trusting nature, our updated design allows parents to set such self-reminders not only when their children watch inappropriate videos on YouTube, but in any case they find it necessary to have a conversation with them about safe and secure online behavior (see Figure 7 in Appendix).
4.2.2 Enhanced Customizability.
In Screen Time, experts emphasized that behavioral goals should be customizable as per the needs of children, where E2 mentioned, “Is there a way that could end up being individualized because often, it’s such a huge spectrum. It is so dependent on that child and what goals are being worked on at that time. It could be anything from hygiene, and toileting, to aggressive behaviors, and self-destructive behaviors to communication goals, like there is an indefinite number of goals that would apply.” Thus, our updated design lets parents add a new behavioral target in an open-ended manner (see Figure 5 in Appendix).
4.2.3 Tips as Guidance for Parents.
Experts suggested that the tool should provide tips for parents to facilitate open communication and self-regulation.
Open Communication. The experts referred to the importance of equipping parents with tips for open communication, which could help guide their children even in an overwhelming situation to find that their children are watching inappropriate content on YouTube. Here, E3 suggested not overemphasizing the risks while talking to children, rather providing rationales to them about why certain content is not appropriate for them to watch. The experts pointed to several tips in this context; for instance, E4 suggested the use of consistent terms like ‘Cool’ and ‘Not Cool’ while referring to children’s behavior, using concrete terms instead of abstract ones, and avoiding the use of analogies. We accommodated the expert-suggested tips in our updated design, which is shown to them when the self-reminder (see §4.2.1 for more details on self-reminder) nudges them to have a conversation with their children (see Figure 6 in Appendix).
All experts emphasized that children are prone to social vulnerability due to their trusting nature; E2 shared her experience: “We had a student send somebody $1,500 because they said a stranger messaged them on Instagram and said I will paint a portrait of you in the picture because you’re so beautiful and the student Venmo them $1,500 immediately. Again, internet safety, risk vulnerability, all those things, this group is typically very trustworthy. So if somebody says they’re gonna do something, they believe it...” Another expert (E4) pointed to children’s difficulty in grasping social cues, which could be exploited to bully them online. Thus, parents need to be proactive in having open communication with children about safe online behavior, where our updated design presents them with relevant topics for discussion, including the sharing of personal information, and identifying bullying (see Figure 7 in Appendix).
Self-Regulation. All experts mentioned that children often cannot map their learning from one context to another. Hence, in Google Photos, parents need to be specific with the type of personal information they expect their children to inspect in a photo before sharing it. To this end, our updated design accommodates a list of personal information recommended by COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule) as the tips for self-regulation (see Figure 9 in Appendix), which parents can leverage in Google Photos to prompt and guide their children towards privacy-preserving photo sharing.
4.2.4 Potential First Respondent.
In Location, experts suggested that the tool should alert the nearest trusted individual (i.e., potential first respondent) in addition to parents when a child goes out of the safe zone. E1 mentioned, “If a child with autism is outside those boundaries, how you need to immediately be notified if there was a way for other individuals to be notified, that would be helpful. So when they’re at school if the teacher’s phone can be added to the school and they can know, Oh, shoot, they get out of the playground and send somebody for him.” So, our updated design lets parents add potential first respondents’ contact information to the tool (see Figure 8 in Appendix).
4.2.5 Reiteration of Learning.
In Google Photos, the experts pointed out that children may need to be prompted multiple times to inspect personal information in a photo before sharing it. Our updated design addresses this feedback, where parents can set repetition frequency for prompting particular personal information multiple times depending on its perceived sensitivity.
Figure 3: Procedural Walkthrough from Initial Design to Storyboard Development; A: Initial design created by authors based on design principles (e.g., instilling self-regulation in the example shown in this figure); B: Designs updated by authors based on the feedback from ASD experts in focus group discussion (e.g., chores-based to behavioral-based in the example shown in this figure); C: Storyboard created by authors using updated designs from step B (e.g., limiting screen time in the example shown in this figure)
5 USER STUDY: METHODS
5.1 Storyboard Development
We created five scenario-based storyboards using the updated designs, where each scenario corresponds to specific challenges in regulating device usage by children (see §4.2 for more details). Here, each of the four controls corresponds to one storyboard. Based on the feedback from ASD experts, we introduced new features in our design aimed at proactive open communication (see §B.3 in Appendix) – presented in a scenario on the fifth storyboard. Following the guideline from prior work [94], we used an annotated, comic-based style in developing storyboard to present a design concept by highlighting its key features, which broadly communicate what they allow users to do, but without detailing how.
Figure 3 illustrates a procedural walkthrough of storyboard development using Screen Time as an example. In this storyboard (see Figure 5 in Appendix), parents can set behavioral targets for their children to complete and get the screen time as a reward. The tool provides a default list of targets suitable for children in general, where parents can include new behavioral targets through a discussion with children. As the screen time comes close to an end, children are notified multiple times with the message from their parents. The further details of our storyboards are included in §B of the Appendix.
| PID | Gender | Range | Child’s | Child’s Diagnosis |
| Range | Gender (Age) | (Levels of ASD) | ||
| P1 | F | 40-44 | Male (3) | Level 1 |
| P2 | F | 45-49 | Male (9) | Level 1 |
| P3 | F | 40-44 | Female (6) | Low end of Level 2 |
| P4 | F | 35-39 | Male (10) | Level 1 |
| P5 | F | 35-39 | Female (9) | Level 1 |
| P6 | F | 40-44 | Male (8) | Level 1 |
| P7 | F | 25-29 | Male (5) | Level 1 |
| P8 | F | 40-44 | Male (6) | Level 2 |
| P9 | F | 35-39 | Male (6) | Level 1 |
| P10 | F | 35-39 | Male (9) | Level 1 |
| P11 | F | 30-34 | Male (8) | Level 1 |
| P12 | F | 30-34 | Female (8) | Level 3 |
| P13 | F | 35-39 | Female (6) | Level 2 |
| P14 | F | 45-49 | Male (7) | Level 1 |
| P15 | F | 30-34 | Male (10) | Level 1 |
| P16 | F | 40-44 | Female (8) | Level 1 |
| P17 | F | 30-34 | Male (7) | Level 1 |
| P18 | F | 35-39 | Male (13) | Level 3 |
| P19 | F | 40-44 | Male (8) | Level 1 |
| P20 | F | 40-44 | Female (7) | Level 1 |
| P21 | F | 45-49 | Male (11) | Level 1 |
| P22 | F | 40-44 | Male (10) | Level 1 |
| P23 | F | 40-44 | Male (5) | Level 1 |
| P24 | F | 25-29 | Male (7) | Level 1 |
| P25 | F | 35-39 | Female (9) | Level 1 |
Table 2: Demographics of Parents (N=25)
5.2 Using Storyboard as Interview Stimuli
We conducted semi-structured interviews with 25 parents (see Table 2) over Zoom, aimed at understanding their challenges to regulating children’s device usage and their perceptions of our design (presented in the form of storyboard) in addressing those issues. All of our participants are female and their ages varied between 25 and 49. Seven of them have daughters and the other 18 participants have sons who are diagnosed with ASD – this gender distribution aligns with the diagnostic ratio for ASD [5, 84]. Most of the children are on level 1 ASD 9, as reported by their parents. In preparing the questionnaire for our study, the lead author of this paper first created a draft that was discussed and refined in a focus group discussion with co-authors. The study was approved by the IRB at our university.
5.2.1 Participant Recruitment.
We leveraged several strategies to recruit participants for our study. We contacted multiple special education schools for children with ASD to inform parents about our study. We distributed flyers at the clinics that offer Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy10. We also shared recruitment messages in autism support groups on social media. In addition, we used snowball sampling, based on the recommendation of participants who had taken part in our study. We recruited participants until we attained saturation of themes (see Table 3 in Appendix). To participate in this study, a participant has to be either a father or a mother of at least one child below or equal to 13 years of age, where the child is diagnosed with ASD and is an active user of the Internet.
5.2.2 Procedure.
When a participant showed interest in taking part in our study, we emailed them the ICD. Once they agreed to ICD, we scheduled a time for the online interview (audio-recorded). At the beginning of the session, we provided the participants with an overview of our study. We then asked them about their parenting experiences and challenges in regulating device usage for children. Afterward, each participant was presented with two storyboards (see §5.1 for more details on the storyboard) using Canva 11, where we clarified that the storyboard would not represent a fully functional application, rather depict visual illustrations and narratives of our designs. In the context of each storyboard, participants were asked about how the design presented in a storyboard would improve their experience of parental mediation. We also asked them if they would want to suggest any changes in existing designs to better assist them with regulating their children’s device usage. At the end of the interview, participants responded to a set of demographic questionnaires. On average, each session took between 45 and 65 minutes to complete. The participants were compensated with a $25 Amazon.com gift card.
5.2.3 Analysis.
We transcribed the audio recordings from interviews and performed thematic analysis [18, 21, 22] on our transcripts. We took an inductive approach for our analysis following the recommended phases from prior work [18, 21, 22]: familiarization, coding, generating initial themes, reviewing themes, defining and naming themes, and writing up. Each participant’s data was coded by two independent researchers. They developed codes from the transcripts of the first few participants, compared those codes, and then iterated again with more participants’ data until a consistent codebook was developed. Once the codebook was finalized, two researchers independently coded the remaining participants’ data. After all participants’ data had been coded, both researchers spot-checked the other’s codes and did not find any inconsistencies. Finally, we organized and taxonomized our codes into higher-level categories.
6 USER STUDY: FINDINGS
In this section, we present the findings from our interview with parents. We highlight the challenges faced by parents in regulating device usage by their children with ASD (see §6.1) and the contexts in which they considered our design concepts (presented in storyboard) would be helpful to cope with those challenges (see §6.2). Figure 4 illustrates the connection between our designs and findings. Following the guideline from prior research [36, 101, 102, 115], for consistency, we used the following terms based on the frequency of themes in participants’ responses: a few (0- 10%), several (10- 25%), some (25- 40%), about half (40- 60%), most (60- 80%), and almost all (80-100%).
6.1 Challenges for Regulating Use of Smartphones and Tablets by Children with ASD (RQ1)
6.1.1 Overfixation on Devices.
Almost all parents reported that they give their children access to devices at an early age for speech therapy, and to help with meltdowns during travels. While their neurotypical children could enjoy alternate activities (e.g. playing outside with peers), a child with ASD struggles to fit in social settings leading to fewer alternatives, and ends up finding solace with devices. Hence, the device acts as a self-regulation tool to help them calm down and deal with overstimulation from social interaction. One of the parents (P11) shared her experience: “We were at a high tourist destination, an ice cream creamery in [place; anonymized for submission]. The line was crowded and loud. He was singing and trying to be louder than the crowd. So my husband went with him to another chair, off in the corner. We let him use our phones to help calm him down and stop the stimming from being too loud and help him regulate himself from being so overwhelmed and overstimulated.”
6.1.2 Sheer Mimicry.
Most parents reported that their children with ASD have an unusual proclivity towards scary and disturbing online video content due to their nature of seeking highly stimulating content. They talked about their concern that such video content is often not age-appropriate for their children; on top of that, a child with ASD could not distinguish between the reality and virtual world presented in such videos, leading to sheer mimicry without understanding whether it is appropriate or not. Consequently, parents have to deal with several issues including a physical threat, unrealistic demands (e.g. going to Jurassic Park), and repetition of socially non-normative behaviors (e.g. inappropriate touch as a result of watching content related to Barbies discussing pregnancy and birth). One of the mothers (P3) shared an incident involving her daughter: “About a year and a half ago, wasn’t her safety, my safety. She’s watching through these scary videos. She couldn’t understand the reality and consequences...so I barely heard a noise behind me and turned around right as she was going out me with a butcher knife. I grabbed her and she had a Pinkie Pie jacket on like a scary Pinkie Pie character. She was being character mode. Luckily, I caught that right at the moment. So that was terrifying, super traumatic for me because I was like, I have a child that could kill me. I know that she would instantly be like, Oh, what happened, but she just can’t separate that from reality like, what would happen had that happened.”
6.1.3 Social Vulnerability.
Almost all parents were concerned about their children’s heightened risk of social vulnerability, which they attributed to two main factors: difficulty for their children to understand social cues, and their desire to fit in. Due to trouble with understanding social cues, i.e. emotions and intentions of others, some children do not recognize bullying or how to deal with it, and they find it hard to identify and keep themselves safe from online predators. Thus, their trusting nature could lead to stranger danger. Referring to an incident where an adult posed as a child, P15 expressed her concern: “He’s not street smart, he takes everything at face value. So I worry, especially with all the creepy people out there, one comment, hey, let’s be friends. He’s not gonna know whether it’s a 10-year-old boy or a 60-year-old man. It’s risks that I am not willing to take...he’s not social and I feel like he’s looking in the computer world to be social, but I can’t trust his judgment.” Adding to their plight, a few parents even mentioned their child searching through the mean terms (e.g. private body parts) used by others online and stumbling on inappropriate content.
Children with ASD may get into trouble because of their desire to fit in social settings. Perceiving they are different from their peers, they may share personal information or approach strangers in an attempt to fit in. The photographic memory may exacerbate the issues for some of them as they are likely to share sensitive financial details like credit card information or passwords. Such concerns present a dilemma for those parents who want their children to become more social while getting worried about their safety; P20 mentioned: “You have to earn in this game [Roblox], you get a cool pet and you can accessorize it. You can also give people your pets if you want and she was doing that, people would just ask her for her pet. And she would be like, Okay, you can have it. It had been like a pet that she had worked hard for. She was just trying to make friends...I can see as she gets older, like, Oh, here’s my card, or here’s my mom’s card.”
6.1.4 Eloping.
The tendency to elope represents one of the notable concerns reported by most parents, which makes them worried about their children’s physical safety. The risk of eloping can increase as the children get older, while they may elope with a certain goal in mind (e.g. chasing a duck) or because they are distracted and lose track of where they are. One of the parents (P7) referred to a past incident of eloping: “He likes white vans and school buses. So if he sees a white van, he is going to do whatever it takes to get to that, he’ll just leave. It’s a continuous thing where, we have workers across the street, who have a white van, and he’ll run over and get in their van, and I’m constantly going over there and bringing him back and having that conversation with him, it’s not safe to go get into somebody’s vehicle, you always need to let mom know when you’re leaving the house. But he continues to do it.”
6.2 Design Evaluation (RQ2)
We used scenario-based storyboards to prompt rich and reflective discussions with the parents. Participants’ responses demonstrated their understanding of our design concept and envisioning its efficacy to foster open communication (see §6.2.1) and instill self-regulation (see §6.2.2) in the process of regulating their children’s device usage.
6.2.1 Fostering Open Communication.
Our participants referred to three primary reasons (see below) that they believe, contributed to the efficacy of our designs in supporting open communication.
Availing context to streamline the thought process of children. The insights into children’s activities afforded by our design for YouTube and Location are appreciated by parents, which they believe would ease their open communication with children by providing the context. They particularly reported their concern about sheer mimicry (see §6.1.2 for more details), where the opportunities of structured dialogue offered by our tool would prompt valuable discussions in which parents could clarify the specific context of a video to their children. P2 mentioned, “All of a sudden, he started using some phrases. I’m like, whoa, whoa, we don’t talk like that in our home. Where did this come from? And all he has to say is YouTube. If I know the context, then I know how to approach it [conversation] like if it’s a video of two young adults and one plays a prank on the other, instead of, that wasn’t nice to say something like Dude What the hell, then I know how to explain to him, what was going on.”
In the context of Location, most participants reported that the logs of previous locations would be useful in facilitating an open dialogue with children about their whereabouts, especially when they start to get more independent. P14 commented, “In the future, I would try something like this [logs of the previous location]. I would ask him, like, what did you do at the store? It wasn’t always easy with my daughter [a neurotypical child]. So I just hope that this would all work, be easy to talk about and easy for him to follow the rules.” In addition, P7 pointed to the usefulness of the logs of previous locations to identify the repetitive pattern of eloping (e.g., eloping of her child to one of their old houses) and prevent that from happening.
Parents reported that in some cases, it might be difficult to have open communication with children about sensitive topics like bullying or sharing of personal information due to their pragmatic language delay 12. P20 perceived that the tips provided in the Proactive Open Communication feature of our design would facilitate such conversation: “She was only in kindergarten last year, sometimes she would come home, and she’d be like, Oh, I don’t like this girl and she would say her name. I would try to talk to her about it and ask, is she not nice? And she would just shut down and she wouldn’t want to talk about it...I guess maybe that’s really a broad question, and maybe a little hard for her to answer with the vocabulary that she has, and also just being six years old. But these questions would have been helpful or more specific to help her like at school for bullying or online.” To further ease the conversation, several parents indicated that specific examples and scenarios related to the tips (e.g., when people are becoming disrespectful in online communication, others are asking for personal information) would be needed to provide a concrete context to their children.
Bridging communication gap by fostering awareness in multiple scenarios. Most participants perceived that insights into YouTube videos watched by children would help to bridge the communication gap for parents in different scenarios. For instance, it would help the parents of non-verbal or semi-verbal children remain aware of what they are interested in, where their obsessions originate from, and what content leads them to distressful situations. Reflecting on such benefits, P1 commented: “ABC [son] is semi-verbal...A good two weeks back, he was talking almost nonstop about a spooky, scary zombie, black spider. We were like, what on earth are you talking about? Had I not seen that video, I would never have known that it is a scary thing like a zombie head on a spider. He wanted so badly to talk about it that he engaged me to tell me about it, which is very rare. He was so frustrated that I didn’t know what he was talking about. Had I been able to see at the beginning of that two-week period, it would have saved him two weeks of frustration and obsession. I would be able to say Yes, I saw that too, it’s very scary, this is what happened and somebody drew that to be scary.”
Parents further referred to the benefit of providing insights into YouTube videos in cases when there are differences in opinions between spouses in regulating their child’s device usage. For one of our participants (P21), her husband was in denial of their son’s diagnosis of autism and was providing him unregulated access to YouTube. She became worried about what contents he might have come across with such unregulated access as she noticed a growing tendency of their son towards sheer mimicry (see §6.1.2). She believed that the insight from our design on YouTube would help her remain aware of the contents watched by their son, and so on, explain the context to their child, if needed.
In another instance, one of the parents (P20) reflected on the benefit of self-reminder provided by our design in bridging the communication gap. She believes, getting a self-reminder from the tool could encourage her to initiate a just-in-time conversation with her daughter; here, she shared her experience during the time of divorce while her child started to watch sensitive content on YouTube: “She [child with ASD] saw him [older brother] watching those [Five Nights at Freddy’s] when she was probably four and she loved them. That was somewhat scary, but she would want to watch it too. We started out just on YouTube kids, but then she was like, there’s nothing on here. I don’t like any of this stuff. This stuff is for babies. I want to watch Freddy’s videos. Also right around that time, her dad and I got divorced. So I feel like we may have failed her a little bit because it was such a crazy time and we just let her watch more things than she probably should have. Then once you do, how do you go back? I don’t know how to tell her, no, now you can’t watch scary things.”
Guiding children to grasp social cues. Participants discussed the benefits of our design on Proactive Open Communication in helping them guide their children about social cues. They referred to their children’s struggle with grasping social cues where they perceive everyone to be nice and cannot identify disrespectful behavior from others during their online communication (see §6.1.3). In this context, P18 commented on the perceived usefulness of the tips provided by our design: “We’ve had instances where a kid throw a rock at him, on the way to the bus. So we could have talked about on there. And online bullying, it’s usually like people saying inappropriate things or calling them inappropriate names. So I could have used that [tips on identifying bullying], like, hey, we’re going to talk about this.”
Several parents reported that their children might find it difficult to differentiate between humor and bullying; as a result, they would mimic the behavior of bullies in the course of fitting in (see §6.1.3). Hence, parents need to have open communication with their children before they get involved in such an act. P6 shared her experiences in this context: “For my daughter, it’d be really helpful because she tends to mask so she’ll copy bad behavior. I could see her either getting bullied, and then not speaking up for herself, or because she wants to fit in, she won’t make waves or could copy the bully’s behavior, because she wants to be liked...I feel like one of the most complicated social challenges for autistic kids is to learn how to handle bullies, because they’re bullied all the time, in real life, in conversations, and a lot of it is just because they think differently, and they’re literal. They don’t understand jokes, what’s mean or not, My son was getting bullied and didn’t even realize that he thought they were playing with them. So I think it’s one of the most important topics to cover, and have a good communication.”
6.2.2 Instilling Self-Regulation.
The participants referred to three primary reasons (see below) as they described how our design concept around instilling self-regulation would help and support their effort in regulating device usage by children.
Availing visual cues to nudge towards expected behavior. The participants reported that our designs on Screen Time, and Location would support their efforts in providing visual cues to children about expected behavior. Most of them particularly mentioned how setting behavioral targets to reward with screen time would provide a structure for their children in everyday life through mapping their actions with consequences; P23 said, “I felt like it [behavioral contract] would help do what we’re already doing. But it would give us more of a structure. He does better, he has fewer meltdowns if he knows what’s coming, so we try to keep things as structured as possible.”
Participants were enthusiastic about the impact of setting behavioral targets in helping their children to develop the skills necessary to navigate everyday life, including self-care (e.g., brushing teeth), emotional regulation (e.g., calming down), and socially normative behavior (e.g. sharing and playing with siblings or peers). They envisioned that defining customized behavioral targets as per the needs of their children would make it easier for them to comply with. On the other hand, a few parents expressed concern about the potential misuse of this approach as children could try to complete as many targets as possible at its bare minimum to get more screen time. To this end, parents pointed out a workaround that they would be as specific as possible while describing the actual target to their children, enabled by our design to define behavioral targets in an open-ended manner.
In the context of Location, parents envisaged that the provision of defining safe zones would provide visual cues for their children to better recognize the places they should not go. One of them (P7) mentioned, “It would be helpful for us to be able to show him, this is not a safe zone or this is the safe zone could be helpful for him.” Participant appreciated the just-in-time visual alert for children as they go out of a safe zone, nudging them to return to the safe zone. Here, a few parents emphasized the need for rerouting instruction for children that the tool can help with, where they may struggle to come back to the safe zone due to their spatial unawareness.
Inculcating sense of autonomy by leveraging tool as a neutral mediator. Participants referred to the efficacy of our design to instill self-regulation through enforcing rules as a neutral mediator. This benefit was discussed in relation to Screen Time, Google Photos, and Location. Our participants perceived that when the rules are enforced through a tool instead of parents directly instructing their children, they become more compliant due to the clarity and structure afforded by a digital interface. This benefit led parents to discuss their efforts in negotiating device use by their children, where most referred to their difficulty in enforcing rules with their children as they may argue, have a tantrum, or simply be non-compliant.
Parents acknowledge that children may have difficulty transitioning from one activity to another, and thus, abruptly taking away a device from them can lead to behavior problems. In this context, almost all of our participants agreed to the need for multiple warnings for their children before their screen time comes close to an end, along with informing them about what is going to happen next (e.g., the device will be taken away when the screen time is over). To this end, they reflected on the usefulness of our feature in Screen Time where children are provided with multiple warnings as they head towards the end of their screen time. One of our participants (P14) commented, “I could tell him 15 minutes remaining, start finishing your game. Then in one minute, I could say, what we’re gonna do next, which could be helpful for him to know why he has to get off. I think it could help with that transition and bring some ease to what’s happening next.”
Parents emphasized that using the tool as a neutral mediator would contribute towards inculcating a sense of autonomy in children, which could also garner mutual trust between parents and children as they get older. Considering Google Photos, P20 referred to her unsuccessful attempts in guiding children towards safe online behavior and pointed out how our design would be helpful in this regard, where she could prompt her children to look out for personal information within photos before sharing it with others. She mentioned, “100%, I would use it. I love asking questions before you’re going to share this photo because I can tell her 100 times, but I don’t think she grasps it. So I think that would be helpful. Not just her mom saying it, but an app is telling her to do it. I love that there are tips for self-regulation right there within the app. It’s not something that I have to go search for. So they had helpful information like that.”
While our participants acknowledged the benefits of in-group activities for their children, they also pointed to their concern about the whereabouts of their children due to the risks of eloping (see §6.1.4 for more details on eloping). To this end, they appreciated our design for Location, especially the provision of alerting potential first respondents when the children go out of a safe zone, which they believe would make them more comfortable to allow their children to participate in outdoor activities with peers. That means, the tool has the potential to help balance between educating children about social skills and ensuring their physical safety. One of our participants (P24) also pointed out how the tool could ease the tasks of ABA therapists and special education teachers in these contexts: “...Sometimes his therapists would take him across the parking lot to a park. It’s summertime, so there are other children, it’s easier for them to get mixed up and lost. I think this would be a great tool for therapists who take children off campus to participate in activities. Also, there are a lot of incidents where special needs teachers don’t even realize that the child has just been roaming down the halls or getting out of the fence of the school. So alerting those respondents who are supposed to be with them at that particular time would be very beneficial.”
Supporting child to internalize learning through hyper-focusing and repetition. Almost all parents pointed out that their children struggle to map their learning from one context to another due to compartmentalization-based thinking pattern 13. To this end, they were excited by our design for Google Photos, where children are prompted to look out for personal information within a photo before they share it. P11 elaborated how this feature would help her child with following socially normative behavior: “He has sensory issues related to clothing. So home is a safe space, and he doesn’t have to wear pants and shirts if he doesn’t want to, except if company is over. When he has therapy each day or if family or friends come to visit, he has his clothes. So to allow him the freedom to just send photos or take photos with his toys, I would use this to prompt him to make sure like are you fully dressed in this photo? Cannot be sending this one. He’s so comfortable with it and it’s allowed at home, but he sometimes struggles to understand why it’s not appropriate. Why maybe an adult shouldn’t be able to see him in his underwear other than Mom and Dad.”
Parents further envisaged that children would need reiteration of learning to identify personal information in the photo. One of our participants (P20) explained how the repetition frequency afforded in our design for Google Photos would address this need and encourage her child to self-reflect on the rules and expectations: “I think the frequency on certain things would be helpful definitely because she might think it would be easier to get past it, maybe not in the sense that it’s easier, but if it’s only asking her once, then she’s like, okay, I’m not going to do it. But then when it asks her again, like, are you sure you want to do this? She might be like, okay, and hesitate.”
Parents also pointed out that some children might have issues with reading out the prompts due to learning disabilities, where offering a text-to-speech conversion feature could provide a viable solution for reading out a prompt to children, e.g., asking them to look for particular personal information in a photo before sharing. Parents also mentioned that children may need positive reinforcement when prompted to look for personal information before sharing a photo, which in turn, would give them a sense of accomplishment. Our participants recommended different forms of positive reinforcement, including vocal praise, celebration emoji, confetti on-screen, digital badges, points, life rewards (e.g. happy meals), or screen time. One of our participants (P11) mentioned, “He does well, if it’s like a game, and he feels he can win...If he answers all the questions correctly, he makes sure that the photo doesn’t have it, then he could get rewarded with a little sticker or you did a good job with virtual confetti, that would motivate him to take it more seriously.”
Figure 4: Visualization of Connection Between Design Features and Findings
7 DISCUSSION
Parents perceive that our designs would be valuable for facilitating open communication through streamlining their children’s thought process, bridging communication gaps, and helping them guide their children about social cues. They believe that our design would help to instill self-regulation in children by providing visual cues, inculcating a sense of autonomy as a neutral mediator, and supporting learning through hyper-focusing and repetition. In this section, we discuss the implications of our findings through the lens of autistic traits (see §7.1) – characterized by restricted interests, repetitive behavior, and difficulties in social interaction and communication [58]. In light of our findings, we also suggest avenues for future research and practice to reimagine parental control for children (see §7.2 and §7.3).
7.1 Reimagining Parental Control: Through the Lens of Autistic Traits
7.1.1 Fostering Open Communication.
Parents in our study perceived that the insights into children’s activities on YouTube and Location would be useful to streamline their children’s thought process by providing them with the rationale behind rules, e.g., why certain content is not appropriate to watch, why certain places are not safe to go (see §6.2.1). They believe that when they provide logical reasoning, it eases open communication with children due to their black-and-white thinking pattern. The enhanced rationale and logical decision-making in ASD can be attributed to systemizing, which is considered a commonly seen strength in autism that leads to greater attention to detail and more logical thinking [11, 12]. Further, individuals with ASD demonstrate circumspect reasoning bias gathering more data before making a decision [23, 24], as suggested by Autism-Psychosis Model. This highlights the effectiveness of open communication with children, rather than using a restrictive approach that poses the risks of behavioral meltdown [25, 38, 65].
Parents discussed the heightened risk of social vulnerability for their children due to difficulty with grasping social cues (see §6.1.3) – it can be explained by Mindblindness Theory [10] stating that children with ASD cannot predict and understand the rationale behind other’s behaviors, which points to the need for guidance from parents. In this regard, parents appreciated the tips provided by our design in Proactive Open Communication, which can act as a guideline for them to initiate a conversation about sensitive topics like identifying bullying and sharing personal information. Using those tips, parents can help children recognize disrespectful behavior in online communication (see §6.2.1).
Simm et al. [106] identified the “variety and idiosyncrasy” of needs while designing for autistic individuals, and called for digital systems that allow fine-grained customization. Parents in our study appreciated the customization offered within our design. For instance, in Screen Time, parents can discuss with their children and set behavioral targets for them in an open-ended manner (see §6.2.2). In YouTube, parents appreciated the affordance of adding custom tips for their children (see §6.2.1), where the use of such consistent technique could ease open communication [57].
7.1.2 Instilling Self-Regulation.
Parents in our study were inclined towards leveraging our design as the neutral mediator, e.g. setting behavioral targets for children (see §6.2.2). They perceived that the process of setting behavioral targets for children to earn screen time as a reward would provide a structured way to map their actions with consequences. While it fulfills the children’s need for structure [11, 12], it would also help them to develop a sense of autonomy. In Location, parents believe that the visual cues related to boundaries and expectations regarding safe zones would be helpful for their children. This can be attributed to the autistic traits stating that autistic individuals perform better on visual processing tasks [50, 105].
Individuals with ASD typically face difficulties in planning and preparing for their activities [33, 68, 79, 87]. Our participants reported such issues with their children and indicated the need for more time compared to their neurotypical children when they switch from one task to another. To this end, parents appreciated our feature to provide multiple nudges in helping their children ease the transition from device usage to other activities as their screen time comes close to an end (see §6.2.2). They also admired the feature in our design for Google Photos, prompting children to look for one personal information at a time, easing the process for them by focusing on a particular information type at a single point (see §6.2.2). Additionally, individuals with ASD find it hard to transfer their learning from one context to another and may need repetitive guidance [40]. To this end, parents found our feature of repetition frequency in Google Photos helpful for their children to self-reflect on the rules.
7.2 Design Implications
7.2.1 Employing Social Stories in the Realm of Parental Control.
The social story is an individualized short story that can be used to assist individuals with ASD in interpreting and understanding challenging social situations [44]. More specifically, a social story presents a sequence of events involving people’s feelings and actions, along with the identification and meaning of social cues, and how to react to them, i.e., what to do or say in that situation [7]. Prior studies [54, 55, 66, 97] indicate children could leverage the social story as a medium for learning, as well as a tool to understand and internalize appropriate behavior necessary for successful social interaction. The efficacy of social stories stems from the use of picture cues and the breaking down of a context into smaller segments [14, 54, 66, 86, 103], which can be explained by WCC theory [105] that individuals with ASD perform better on visual processing tasks. Parents in our study appreciated the value of the tips provided by our design to guide their children about grasping social cues, and have open communication on difficult topics like identifying bullying and sharing personal information. Here, parents suggested the presentation of tips with more example scenarios for children (see §6.2.1). To this end, we encourage future research to focus on leveraging social stories in extending our findings, where social stories can be an effective medium to depict the tips through graphics and break down a broad context into more focused scenarios.
7.2.2 Finding a Balance Between Children’s Safety and Their Privacy.
In this study, we present parents’ evaluation of our design, where they found that the insights into children’s activities are valuable to getting familiar with the context of the videos watched by them on YouTube (see §6.2.1). Further, considering the vulnerability of children due to difficulty in grasping social cues, parents pointed to the significance of learning about children’s online activities. In these contexts, children may have their own perceptions of privacy and to understand their needs, we plan to deploy our prototype for a field study involving both children and parents, to focus on the tension and balance between children’s safety as prioritized by their parents and their expectations around privacy.
One potential way to attain a meaningful balance between children’s safety and privacy could be through designing a developmentally appropriate parental control tool based on the age and risk-coping skills of children. Prior studies on neurotypical children [41, 76] reported that young children were comfortable with parents accessing their messages, location, contacts, and browsing history, whereas relatively older children expressed a desire to have open communication instead of parents directly going through their online activity details. To this end, we recommend future work to examine developmentally appropriate access to children’s online activity. For instance, parents can have access to online activity details for young children, whereas, for relatively older children, high-level information can be provided to them. The high-level insights can include marking YouTube videos for sensitive aspects, including profanity, sexual content, derogatory words, and violence, where further details (e.g., hug, kiss, etc.) within a certain aspect (e.g. sexual content) can be accommodated as well. Such insights would aid parents to have a meaningful conversation with their children while respecting their desire for privacy.
7.2.3 Co-parenting.
Individuals with ASD are inclined towards consistent structure and routine [33, 68, 87]. Parents in our study reported their children’s struggle due to inconsistencies in parental regulation, e.g., when the opinion varies between parents related to what type of video their children can watch (see §6.2.1). In our study, parents pointed to the perceived usefulness of our design in helping them to maintain consistency in parental regulation. For instance, when there are differences in rules related to what type of YouTube content is allowed for children, the insights into YouTube videos watched by children could help bridge the communication gap between parents (see §6.2.1). In future work, we plan to enhance and evaluate our designs to further cater to co-parenting, for instance, through extending our design of self-reminder for supporting open communication as a regular practice in a collaborative family setting.
7.3 Guidelines for User Study
In this section, we share some of our experiences from conducting the study with parents who have children with ASD, which could be helpful for future research with a similar participant pool. During the questionnaire design, we paid attention that a child is not viewed through a deficit lens, i.e., we carefully crafted our questions to ensure that they would not inadvertently portray ASD as a deficiency or disorder. We also looked into prior work [17, 56] to choose appropriate language for the questionnaire; for instance, respecting parent’s preference for person-first language, we used terms like "children with ASD", and "children on the spectrum" to refer to their children. During the interview, while the parents responded to our questions on regulating their children’s device usage, in a few cases, they became emotional while talking about their parenting experiences and shared stories with us extending beyond the scope of device usage. We understand the challenges of parenting children with special needs and were empathetic with our participants in such situations. It created a comfortable environment for them during the study, although for a few participants, it took longer than average to complete the study session. The authors who conducted the study were flexible to accommodate the variability in interview duration, where having adequate buffer time between scheduled study sessions was notably helpful.
8 LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE WORK
We recruited 25 participants in our study with parents. Our sample size is comparable to that from prior work with similar study methods [29, 113, 118]. Further, our sample size is reasonable considering the qualitative nature of our study, aiming to reimagine the design of parental control tools to be inclusive for parents having children with ASD. All our participants are mothers from the United States. Recent studies [1, 35, 85, 93, 100, 104, 116] show that user behavior around technology use can vary based on their socioeconomic status, educational level, and cultural and religious beliefs. Thus, our findings may not be generalizable to all the parents. We thus, encourage future research to look beyond the Western context with a goal of designing parental control tools customized to different societal and cultural values.
While we did not constrain participant recruitment based on their children’s level of ASD, most of them reported their children were on level 1 ASD (see Table 2) – It is reasonable considering that individuals with level 1 ASD are more regular users of the Internet as compared to others at higher levels of ASD [75], where the child being an active Internet user was one of our criteria for participant recruitment. We did not find notable differences in the expectations of parents around parental control tools based on their children’s level of ASD, however, we believe that more in-depth understanding is required for the children with higher levels of ASD. We thus, plan to focus more on children with higher ASD levels in future work, where we will take their varying cognitive and behavioral abilities into account to make our design more inclusive in regulating device usage for them.
In the study with parents, they went through our design presented in the form of storyboard; similar to prior work [29, 113, 118], we conducted the study in a controlled environment. We acknowledge the limitation of such studies that user behavior can vary in a real-world scenario. However, the controlled setting helps to establish performance bounds and figure out whether field studies are worthwhile in future research. Now that the findings from our study show promise, we will conduct a field study to understand how parents leverage the features in our prototype in a real-world environment.
9 CONCLUSION
Our study contributes towards reimagining the design of parental control tools for children with ASD. We present the parental challenges in regulating device usage by children, including overfixation on devices, sheer mimicry, social vulnerability, and eloping (RQ1). To address these challenges, we leverage the values of open communication and self-regulation in designing inclusive parental control tool; we refined our designs based on the feedback from ASD experts, followed by an evaluation by the parents (RQ2). In fostering open communication, parents appreciate the support from our design to streamline their children’s thought process, bridge the communication gap with them, and guide them to grasp social cues. To instill self-regulation, they point out the role of our design as a neutral mediator, the value of visual cues, and how the repetitive prompt would be contributing to their children. Based on our findings, we provide the guidelines for future research in these directions. Taken together, our study advances the understanding of CHI community towards designing inclusive parental control tool considering the challenges, perceptions, and expectations of parents having children with ASD.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank our participants in this study. We are thankful to the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and detailed feedback.
APPENDIX
A INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
A.1 Background Questions
Q1. | Can you tell me the age and gender of your child14? | ||||||||||||||||
Q2. | At what age was your child diagnosed with Autism? What was he diagnosed with specifically? | ||||||||||||||||
Q3. | Does your child own a smartphone or any other digital device?
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Q4. | What activities does your child do mostly on his phone? | ||||||||||||||||
Q5. | What are some of the challenges you have faced in terms of regulating the use of devices by your child?
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Q6. | Can you share any experience with us when you became concerned about your child’s online safety because of their device use? | ||||||||||||||||
Q7. | Do you have any prior experiences using parental control tools for your child?
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A.2 Screen Time
A.2.1 General Questions.
Q1. | We all know, children are fixated on devices these days. Do you want to share any recent incidents that have made you concerned about your child spending too much time on devices? | ||||
We have created our designs to help you regulate screen time for your child. Let us go through those designs. (Show the storyboards)
A.2.2 Behavioral Contract.
Q1. | As you see, we provided parents with a list of behavioral targets to get started with, where parents can add more behavioral targets as appropriate for their child. Can you tell us about any past incidents where if you had this parental control tool, you could have better negotiated with your child to complete the behavioral targets to get screen time as a reward?
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Q2. | As you have noticed in our interface, we have provided some examples of behavioral targets, such as playing with friends, deep breathing exercises, etc. Here, you can add more behavioral targets as you see appropriate for your child.
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Q3. | How do you think this idea of rewarding your child with screen time by setting behavioral targets will motivate them to self-regulate their usage of devices? | ||||||||||||||||
Q4. | How can we improve this reward system based on behavioral agreements so that it motivates your child better to self-regulate their usage of devices? | ||||||||||||||||
A.2.3 Multiple Alerts.
Q1. | What approach do you typically take with your child to take away the devices from him/her when you think they have used their device long enough for a day? Do you take it away abruptly or give him/her a heads-up once or more times? | ||||||||||
Q2. | As you have noticed in our interface, we have enabled parents to send multiple warnings to their child when the screen time is coming to an end. Here, you can add a certain number of warnings as you see appropriate for your child. Please tell us about any time in the past when this provision for providing multiple notifications would have helped regulate the device used by your child.
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Q3. | What different message would you have for your child for each of the warnings sent at different intervals?
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Q4. | Do you have any concerns related to sending multiple notifications to your child? Please tell us why. | ||||||||||
A.3 YouTube
A.3.1 General Questions.
Q1. | Does your child use YouTube or other video streaming apps on their devices? | ||||
Q2. | We all know there is no shortage of content on YouTube. However, some content is inappropriate for children based on parents’ preferences. Sometimes it is tricky to have open communication with children when they watch something sensitive that you do not want them to watch. | ||||
We have created some designs to encourage open communication with your child about the videos he watched. Let us go through those scenarios along with our design. (Show the storyboards)
A.3.2 Thumbnails.
Q1. | What challenges do you face or anticipate to face in having an open communication with your child about the YouTube videos they should not watch? | ||||||||||
Q2. | As you have noticed, our interface aims to help parents have open communication with their children about the YouTube videos they watched by providing a set of information. Now can you share any incident from your experience where this parental control tool would have helped you to have an open communication with your child about the YouTube videos they watched?
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Q3. | What more information do you think our interface can provide you in this context to have open communication with your child? | ||||||||||
A.3.3 Self-Reminder.
Q1. | Moving on to another interface, please tell us about a situation where this self-reminder for yourself would have been helpful to initiate communication with your child.
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Q2. | Please tell us what other features our self-reminder interface can provide to better support your open communication with your child. | ||||||||||
A.3.4 Tips for Open Communication.
Q1. | As you see, the interface provides tips for open communication. Please tell us about an incident from your experience where you think you could have used these tips to have open communication with your child about YouTube videos they watched.
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Q2. | What changes do you think we can make to our interface so that it becomes easier for you to use these tips? | ||||||||||
A.4 Location
A.4.1 General Questions.
Q1. | How do you remain informed about the whereabouts of your child? | ||||
Q2. | Do you feel concerned sometimes when you do not know about the current location of your child? Do you want to share any incidents with us that made you worried recently? | ||||
We have created some designs to help you remain informed about your child’s whereabouts and have open communication with him or her about the places he visited. Let us go through those scenarios along with our design. (Show the storyboards)
A.4.2 Safe Zones.
Q1. | As you see, we have designed a solution where you can define safe zones for your child, and you are notified whenever they go out of that safe zone. Can you share an incident from your experience where this parental control tool would have helped you to set expectations for your child about the places he shouldn’t go.
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Q2. | As you see in our interface, you can notify your child when they go out of the safe zone. We know that sometimes a child may react when we notify them about something they should not have done. Considering such experiences from your past, how effective do you think this notifying feature will be in getting your child back to the safe zone when they go out of it? | ||||||||||
Q3. | As you see in our interface, we provide options for parents to set a potential first respondent for each safe zone. These first respondents can be anyone according to your preference, such as caregivers, teachers, or any other individuals. Along with you, our interface will notify the first respondent as well when your child goes out of that safe zone. Can you share an incident from your experience where this feature of alerting the potential first respondent would have been helpful to you?
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A.4.3 Logs of Previous Locations.
Q1. | Do you talk with your child about the places he should not go? What challenges do you typically face or anticipate to face in having such open communication with your child? | ||||||||||
Q2. | As you see, our interface provides various information to help parents have open communication with their child about the places he went. Now can you share any incident from your experience where this parental control tool would have helped you to have an open communication with your child about the places he went?
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Q3. | What more information do you think our interface can provide you in this context to have open communication with your child? | ||||||||||
A.5 Google Photos
A.5.1 General Questions.
Q1. | Do you know if your child shares photos or videos with others through their devices? | ||||
Q2. | Sharing personal information with others is quite risky these days, as bad people create online traps to get the information, and may misuse them. Do you feel concerned that your child might share photos containing personal information like your house address, license plate number of your car, school name, etc. with others? Do you want to share any incidents that have made you concerned? | ||||
We are trying to make sure that children do not share photos containing personal information with others. So, we have come up with some solutions for parents to prevent children from sharing photos containing personal information. Let’s go through our solution. (Show the storyboards)
A.5.2 Generalization.
Q1. | As we have seen, we provided parents with a list of personal information to get started with where parents can add more personal information as they see appropriate. How do you think this list would help your child in not sharing photos with personal information? | ||||||||||
Q2. | Can you tell us about any past incidents where if you had this parental control tool, you could have prompted your child not to share photos with personal information?
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Q3. | As you see the list includes some personal information, but there could be more that may not be included in the list. Would you tell us how your child might use this list to identify personal information that’s not on the list? Let me put it this way: Imagine that you prompt your child to look out if the home address is in the photo, how likely is it for him/her to understand that he should not share a photo that has a school address as well? | ||||||||||
Q4. | What new features do you think we can add in this interface that will further motivate your child to not share photos containing personal information? What kind of rewards the parental control tool can provide for your child to motivate them not to share photos containing personal information? | ||||||||||
A.5.3 Tips for Self-Regulation.
Q1. | As you see, the interface provides tips for self-regulation. Please tell us about an incident from your experience where you think you could have used these tips to guide your child in identifying personal information in photos they want to share.
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Q2. | What changes do you think we can make to our interface so that it becomes easier for you to use these tips? | ||||||||||
A.5.4 Repetition Frequency.
Q1. | We all know that parents are concerned about the online safety of their children. Sometimes parents might have to prompt their child multiple times about their online behavior before the child adopts them.
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A.6 Proactive Open Communication
A.6.1 General Questions.
Q1. | We all know, that technology has become an inevitable part of our life. As a result, children are also getting access to devices like smartphones and tablets and parents want to keep them safe online. Have you had open communication with your child recently about what they should or should not do to be safe online? | ||||
We have come up with some solutions for parents to have open communication with their children about what they should or should not do to be safe online. Let’s go through our solution. (Show the storyboards)
A.6.2 Self-Reminder.
Q1. | Please tell us about an incident from your experience where this self-reminder for yourself would have been helpful to initiate communication with your child about sensitive topics.
| ||||||||||
Q2. | Please tell us what other features our self-reminder interface can provide to better support your open communication with your child. | ||||||||||
A.6.3 How to Identify Bullying.
Q1. | As you see, the interface provides tips for helping your child identify online bullying. Please tell us an incident from your experience where you think you could have used these tips to have open communication with your child about the online bullying they might have faced.
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Q2. | What changes do you think we can make to our interface so that it becomes easier for you to use these tips related to identifying online bullying? | ||||||||||
A.6.4 Sharing of Financial Information.
Q1. | We all know, children are not very experienced with the outside world and may trust people easily. As a result, they may end up sharing sensitive information like financial information with strangers online. | ||||||||||
Q2. | As you see, the interface provides tips for having open communication with your child about not sharing financial information with strangers. Please tell us an incident from your experience where you think you could have used these tips to have open communication with your child about being careful with sharing financial information with others.
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Q3. | What changes do you think we can make to our interface so that it becomes easier for you to use these tips related to not sharing financial information? | ||||||||||
B STORYBOARDS
B.1 Storyboard 1 (Screen Time)
Figure 5: Storyboard 1 - Screen Time
B.2 Storyboard 2 (Youtube)
Figure 6: Storyboard 2 - Youtube
Our second storyboard shows regulating contents watched on YouTube (see Figure 6). Experts believe that the insights into children’s activities can open the door for a conversation on sensitive topics and address the need for explicitness desired by children with ASD. Parents are provided with a set of information related to the videos their children watch on YouTube including how many times the video is watched, for how long, and whether it’s autoplay or intentionally clicked by them. Whenever parents see any inappropriate videos, they can set a self-reminder along with a date and time to have open communication with their children about that. While having open communication, they can also use the tips for open communication tailored to the specific communication patterns of autistic individuals. For instance, the use of consistent terms like Cool or Not Cool, the use of concrete rather than abstract terms, avoiding the use of analogies, not talking too much about the risks, etc.
B.3 Storyboard 3 (Proactive Open Communication)
Figure 7: Storyboard 3 - Proactive Open Communication
Our third storyboard envisions a new scenario for proactive open communication (see Figure 7). In addition to having reactive open communication (i.e. whenever they watch some inappropriate content on YouTube), experts suggested that it is inevitable to initiate open communication proactively with children about safe and unsafe online behaviors due to their higher chance of being manipulated by online predators due to their trusting nature. Parents can set a self-reminder along with a date and time to proactively have open communication with their children about what they should or should not do online. While setting self-reminders, they can also use topics provided by the tool including how to identify bullying and sharing financial information along with tips on how to approach those conversations.
B.4 Storyboard 4 (Location)
Figure 8: Storyboard 4 - Location
Our fourth storyboard depicts location tracking (see Figure 8). As children with ASD are governed by the rules, experts saw the potential of using safe zones to set boundaries for parents and logs of previous locations to support open communication about their whereabouts. Parents can specify safe zones for their children like school, home, relatives’ area, etc. along with a time frame when children are expected to be in that zone. They can also set the potential first respondent for the respective safe zone. They can enable the tool to send alert notifications to themselves, their children, and the potential first respondent whenever the child leaves the safe zone. The tool also provides parents with logs of previous locations that can be used to have open communication with their children about their whereabouts.
B.5 Storyboard 5 (Google Photos)
Figure 9: Storyboard 5 - Google Photos
Our fifth storyboard describes regulating content sharing in Google Photos (see Figure 9). The experts commented on the usefulness of prompting children to watch out for personal information in the photos they are trying to share, as they talked about the need to teach them about what information is appropriate to share or not. Whenever children are trying to share photos, parents can prompt them with a list of personal information to watch out for within the photos. Parents can also set the repetition frequency for each personal information to prompt it more than once depending on the perceived sensitivity. The tool would also provide tips for self-regulation that are specific for the children on the spectrum so that they can guide their children better while sharing photos with others.
Figure 10: Post-it Notes from Brainstorming Session in Google Jamboard (Session 2)
| Participant | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Percentage of Themes Covered | 16.4 | 23.6 | 32.7 | 40 | 52.7 | 56.4 | 69.1 | 72.7 | 72.7 |
| Participant | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| Percentage of Themes Covered | 76.4 | 83.6 | 87.3 | 92.7 | 92.7 | 96.4 | 98.2 | 98.2 | 98.2 |
| Participant | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | ||
| Percentage of Themes Covered | 98.2 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
Table 3: Attaining Theoretical Saturation
Footnotes
1 We used terms like "children with ASD", "children on the spectrum" in this paper respecting parents’ preference for person-first language [17, 56].
Footnote2 In this paper, the term "devices" refers to smartphones and tablets.
Footnote- Footnote
4 We created our design in the form of a low-fidelity prototype using AdobeXD. AdobeXD is a vector design tool, developed and published by Adobe Inc. to create wireframes, prototypes, and screen designs for digital products such as websites and mobile apps.
Footnote5 In the rest of this paper, we use the term: children to refer to the children with ASD, unless otherwise specified.
Footnote6 In this paper, we interchangeably use the terms: ‘tool’ and ‘design’.
Footnote7 Jamboard
Footnote8 "How Might We" (HMW) statements are small but mighty questions that allow us to reframe our insights into opportunity areas and innovate on problems [13].
Footnote9 Children with Level 1 ASD are high functioning compared to Level 2 and 3.
Footnote10 ABA therapy is based on the science of learning and behavior intended to help autistic individuals improve skills such as communication, social, self-care, and hygiene routines, etc. [51]
Footnote11 Canva
Footnote12 In such situation, children may have difficulty understanding the meaning of what others are saying as well as have difficulty using language appropriately to interact with others [91].
Footnote13 In such thinking pattern, people mentally separate conflicting thoughts, emotions, or experiences [107].
Footnote14 Throughout this section, the term ‘child’ would refer to the child on the spectrum.
Footnote
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Index Terms
- “I feel like he’s looking in the computer world to be social, but I can’t trust his judgement”: Reimagining Parental Control for Children with ASD
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