Some Things Never Change: Overcoming Persistent Challenges in Children IR

There is a lack of a steady and solid influx of information retrieval (IR) research that has children (as the user group) as the protagonist. Existing work is scattered, conducted by only a few research groups, and often based on small-scale user studies or data that cannot be widely shared. Moreover, much of the current research focuses on specific age ranges and abilities, neglecting the broader spectrum of children's needs. Consequently, the paucity of IR research on how search and recommender systems serve and/or ultimately affect children translates into one of many 'Low-resource environments' in IR. Drawing from the literature and our experience in this area, we highlight key challenges and encourage greater attention from the IR community to address this critical gap.