Alexa, shut up! – A 2.5-year study on negatively connotated communication behaviour towards voice assistants in the family home

Users often mindlessly treat machines such as voice assistants (VAs) like social beings, speaking politely despite VAs functioning as commandable tools that do not require polite expressions. In fact, unnecessary words can even impair interactions, causing frustration. This contrast between social and functional interactions is especially relevant in family homes with children, where VAs are often integrated long-term. Since children are still learning social communication rules, they might adopt negatively connotated communication patterns with the VA, such as a lack of politeness, commanding phrasing, or verbal abuse. Over 2.5 years, 128 parents therefore completed six online surveys about their own and their children's communication behaviour towards and relationship with their VA, as well as their own social perception of and satisfaction with the VA. Multilevel analyses revealed that parents considered themselves to be more polite to the VA than their children. Perceived relationship closeness between children and VA positively predicted children's commanding, politeness, and verbal abuse tendencies towards the VA over time, whereas for the parents, relationship closeness only influenced politeness. The findings highlight the potential impact of social perceptions on long-term communication with VAs and tackle the concern of VA's negative impact on human-human communication.