Drawing Privacy: How Children Conceptualize Regulation and Content Across Development

Children's understanding of privacy develops as they navigate both physical and digital spaces. This study examines how children aged 3- to 13- years-old conceptualize privacy through their drawings, analyzing data from the Privacy Illustrated dataset. We explored two key dimensions: regulation (mechanisms controlling access, such as doors) and content (what children consider private, such as bedrooms or intellectual property). Our findings suggest that as children get older, they are more likely to view privacy as something that can be actively managed using physical barriers and control mechanisms. In contrast, younger children often depicted privacy as simply being alone. Content-related depictions remained relatively stable across ages, though older children included more abstract ideas, such as digital privacy. This study provides a novel framework for examining privacy development, highlighting distinct but interrelated dimensions of privacy.