Contextual Understanding of Teen & Youth Privacy Perceptions with Social Robots

One of the biggest concerns voiced by families about child-centered robots in homes is privacy. My work uses co-design to better understand how youth, their family, and their clinicians formalize a youth's right to privacy with social robots. In particular, I highlight teen voices who are often overlooked in HRI. My main takeaways emphasize how the unique positioning of a robot as a non-authoritative, yet prosocial ‘other’ presence means stakeholders have lower perceptions of privacy when data collection and sharing is clearly defined by the robot's task. Furthermore, a social robot is situated among a teen's pre-existing relationships and responsibilities, framing privacy with robots from a relational perspective and elevating the need to clearly define the appropriate social roles for robots. In future work, I will couple these takeaways with youth's lived experiences with robots to see how privacy is contextualized further by the use of social robots in youth spaces.