Design and Evaluation of OnlinePal: A Digital Behavior Change Intervention to Support Healthy Internet Use and Parental Mediation

The growing engagement of children with the internet amplifies problematic internet usage and necessitates an adequate parental mediation strategy. We introduce OnlinePal, a dual-app digital behavior intervention aimed at children and their parents. The intervention incorporates five persuasive components including goal-setting, game-like missions, achievement recognition, planning, and monitoring. We conducted a mixed-methods evaluation involving 12 parent–child dyads and three healthcare professionals through task-based walkthroughs followed by interviews and System Usability Scale ratings. The mean SUS score for OnlinePal is 73.33, corresponding to a satisfactory level of perceived usability. Participants appreciated the engaging and structured approach but identified three interaction-level challenges likely to impact adoption: perceived decision burden during initial configuration, inability to form a cohesive mental model of interactions between goals, missions, and rewards, and children’s resistance to automated restrictions that disrupt existing activities. These breakdowns are translated into design considerations for family digital wellbeing technology.