One Size Doesn't Fit All: Towards Design and Evaluation of Developmentally Appropriate Parental Control Tool

As children progress through developmental stages, they undergo substantial biological, cognitive, and social changes, creating unique needs for online safety across different age groups (e.g., young children, tweens, teens). The existing parental control tools fail to account for these differences, leaving a notable gap in the literature on parental mediation. To this end, we conducted 10 focus group sessions with a total of 20 parents to understand their preferences for age-appropriate design components that promote self-regulation and open communication, followed by an ideation workshop with four UX design experts to translate these preferences into customized features. We then evaluated these designs (presented as storyboards) through semi-structured interviews with 25 parents. Our study joins the body of work on parental mediation, providing valuable insights into customizing parental control settings as children transition through the developmental stages. Based on our findings, we offer guidelines for future research in these directions.