From Knowledge to Practice: Co-Designing Privacy Controls with Children

Children born in the digital era are facing increasing privacy risks and the need to control privacy in various contexts, suggesting an urgent need to enhance their privacy literacy. While previous research focuses on developing children’s privacy literacy by delivering privacy knowledge, it remains unclear how children process the knowledge and apply it in various privacy situations. Furthermore, children’s desire for privacy controls remains understudied. To fill the gap, we conducted two five-day co-design workshops with 11 children (ages 6-11). We uncovered children’s sophisticated expectations of everyday privacy management, such as staying aware of their privacy situations, strong authentication methods, and minimal privacy exposure. We further discovered that children translated their privacy knowledge to privacy practices through an iterative reflection and action process. We discussed key considerations to support children’s privacy literacy development by leveraging this process and offered implications for children-friendly privacy design.