# Protection or Punishment? Relating the Design Space of Parental Control Apps
and Perceptions About Them to Support Parenting for Online Safety

Ge Wang<EMAIL_ADDRESS>Department of Computer Science. University of
OxfordOxfordUK ,  Jun Zhao<EMAIL_ADDRESS>Department of Computer
Science. University of OxfordOxfordUK ,  Max Van Kleek
<EMAIL_ADDRESS>Department of Computer Science. University of
OxfordOxfordUK and  Nigel Shadbolt<EMAIL_ADDRESS>Department of
Computer Science. University of OxfordOxfordUK

(January 2021 ; April 2021 ; May 2021)

###### Abstract.

_Parental control apps_ , which are mobile apps that allow parents to monitor
and restrict their children’s activities online, are becoming increasingly
adopted by parents as a means of safeguarding their children’s online safety.
However, it is not clear whether these apps are always beneficial or effective
in what they aim to do; for instance, the overuse of restriction and
surveillance has been found to undermine parent-child relationship and
children’s sense of autonomy. While previous research has categorised and
taken inventory of key features of popular parental control apps, they have
not systematically analysed the ways such features were designed or realised
in such apps, or in particular how aspects of such designs might relate to
parents and children’s experiences with such apps. In this work, we
investigate this gap, asking specifically: how might children’s and parents’
perceptions be related to how parental control features were designed? To
investigate this question, we conducted an analysis of 58 top Android parental
control apps designed for the purpose of promoting children’s online safety,
finding three major axes of variation in how key restriction and monitoring
features were realised: granularity, feedback/transparency, and parent-child
communications support. To relate these axes to perceived benefits and
problems, we then analysed 3264 app reviews to identify references to aspects
of the each of the axes above, to understand children’s and parents’ views of
how such dimensions related to their experiences with these apps. Our findings
led towards 1) an understanding of how parental control apps realise their
functionalities differently along three axes of variation, 2) an analysis of
exactly the ways that such variation influences children’s and parents’
perceptions, respectively of the usefulness or effectiveness of these apps,
and finally 3) an identification of design recommendations and opportunities
for future apps by contextualising our findings within existing digital
parenting theories.

Children online safety; parental controls; mobile apps; parental mediation

††copyright: acmcopyright††journal: PACMHCI††journalyear: 2021††journalvolume:
5††journalnumber: CSCW2††article: 343††publicationmonth: 10††price:
15.00††doi: 10.1145/3476084††ccs: Human-centered computing Walkthrough
evaluations††ccs: Human-centered computing HCI theory, concepts and
models††ccs: Human-centered computing Empirical studies in HCI

##  1\. Introduction

Children are spending an unprecedented amount of time online each day via
their smartphones and tablets. In the UK, for instance, 96% of children aged
5-15 are online, and more than half of ten-year-olds have their own
smartphones or tablets (Ofcom.org, 2020). While the Internet has become an
essential enabler for children to learn, have fun, and grow––especially during
a pandemic—there are, of course, significant risks associated with children
going online, especially as they engage in new digital activities (Hana and
Catherine, 2020; Brian O’Neill, 2018). Increasing concerns are discussed
regarding excessive screen time (Unicef, 2020; Ofcom, 2019; Wang et al.,
2019), as well as more direct risks including cyber bulling, inappropriate or
harmful content, among others (Zhao et al., 2019; Sonia and Julia, 2017;
Pinter et al., 2017). In response to children’s increasing exposure to both
classes of risks, a new genre of apps, known as _parental control apps_ have
emerged. These tools are designed to act as technical mediation support for
parents to facilitate access to, and control over, their children’s online
activities as a means of protecting them from such harms (Zaman and Nouwen,
2016). These apps have rapidly grown in popularity over the past few years.
The global parental control software market is anticipated to grow from
$1.52Bn USD in 2017 to $2.53Bn USD by the end of 2023 (mrf, 2019).

This rapid adoption and increasing reliance on parental control apps has
raised corresponding questions about their efficacy — how such apps fit into
existing parenting strategies, and the effects such apps are having on parents
and their children. Only a few empirical studies of these apps have thus far
been conducted, and have started to reveal some shortcomings of these apps.
Wisniewski et al. (2017) (Wisniewski et al., 2017) derived a Teen Online
Safety Strategies Framework (TOSS) and applied it for an analysis of features
of 75 popular parental control apps for teenagers. A following-up analysis of
reviews on these apps by children found many reasons they disliked parental
control apps, including the ways they overly restricted them and
disenfranchised them of autonomy and privacy, but also identified positive
aspects, such as for managing screen time and keeping them from harmful
content (Ghosh et al., 2018a). These studies reveal there may be significant
room to improve parental control apps not just towards supporting more
effective parental mediation, but ensuring that such measures do not
inadvertently introduce new harms or take away valuable opportunities and
benefits of digital environments for children.

To understand where and how such improvements might be achieved, we used
Wisniewski et al. (2017) (Wisniewski et al., 2017) as the baseline for our
research. In this paper we first analysed 58 popular Android parenting control
apps to examine how features on the current app market maps to the TOSS
framework, and then we further analysed the ways these features were
specifically realised. We found three primary axes of feature variation
relating to _granularity_ , which refers to the level of control an app
enables parents to do or the level of information given to the parents,
feedback/transparency, which refers to the different designs that support
varied level of information given to the children, and finally parent-child
communications support, which reflect how apps supported or stimulated
discussions between parents and children about their online activities. These
axes of variation offer an orthogonal way of organising the current parental
app design space in comparison to TOSS, allowing us to focus on the different
designs used to support each function. To then understand how each of these
axes relate to how apps effectively support or create problems for children,
we conducted a thematic analysis of both children’s and parents’ reviews
regarding how their perceptions varied across the ways features were
implemented.

The contributions of this paper are threefold, as follow: 1) first, it extends
Wisniewski and Ghosh’s (Wisniewski et al., 2017) TOSS framework by introducing
three orthogonal axes of variation, which contributes an understanding of how
parental control apps realise their functionalities differently along these
three axes of variation, 2) second, by relating such axes to positive and
negative reviews of apps, we identify how the design of features may influence
children’s and parents’ perceptions of them, and finally 3) we identify gaps
in the current parental control app design space, contextualising our findings
to digital parenting theories. From this, we derive at least two approaches
that more autonomy-supportive parental control apps might be achieved. The
first, by simply designing app features to fall along each of the three axes
within our identified “zone of best practice”–designs perceived most
positively by both parents and children. Second, to complement and pair
restriction and monitoring features in an age and skill-appropriate manner,
e.g. to gradually allow children to move from strictest monitoring and
restriction features to gain more autonomy as they develop necessary skills
associated with recognising and mitigating online risks, and to prioritise the
use of verbal agreements, thus reframing the use of restriction and monitoring
features as a means of scaffolding children’s online skills.

##  2\. Related Work

###  2.1. Children’s Online Safety

Children’s online safety has been a broad topic that is closely related to our
research. Livingstone et al. (Mascheroni et al., 2015) categorised the
different types of online risks under content (child as receiver), contact
(child as participant) and conduct (child as actor), in which children may
experience online risks of four types - aggressive (violent content,
harassment, and hostile peer activity), sexual (pornographic content, sexual
abuse online, ‘sexting’), values (hateful content, ideological persuasion,
potentially harmful user-generated content) and commercial (embedded
marketing, personal data misuse, copyright infringement). Similarly, the UK
Online Harms White Paper (Government, 2019) identified the scope of online
harms as explicit harms (e.g. harassment and cyberstalking), harms with a less
clear definition (e.g. cyberbullying and trolling), and underage exposure
(e.g. inappropriate material). A survey done by Ofcom in 2019 showed that
data-related harms (e.g. data collection in obscure ways), security harms
(e.g. scams/fraud) and content/contact harms (e.g. offensive language) were
the most commonly reported online harms experienced by children (Ofcom.org,
2019).

Children’s online safety has become an even more critical issue when it comes
to their mobile online safety, due to the ubiquitous nature of mobile devices.
Existing online safety problems including stranger danger, online
inappropriate content, bullying problems have been amplified. Children now
have instant access to the internet (Smahel et al., 2020; Mollborn and Fomby,
2020), and parents reported that it has been even harder for them to keep
track of their children’s online activities when their children were using
devices of their own (Research, 2020). Children have been subjected to mobile
use starting from a very young age. In their initial years (3-5), children’s
mobile use are still mainly adult-guided. Several studies indicate that it is
not uncommon for parents to rely on technology to keep their children busy or
entertained, regularly using a smartphone to replace babysitting (Livingstone
et al., 2011). Meanwhile, children at this stage do not always understand the
difference between fantasy and reality (Pine and Nash, 2002; Ali et al.,
2009). For slightly older children (6-11), they are gaining increasing
independent use of devices (ofcom.org, 2017, 2016). Children at this stage are
learning about the complexities of relationships and becoming socially more
sophisticated. Contacting their friends through mobile devices become an
essential part of their lives, due to the need to fit in and be accepted by
the peer group (Kidron and Rudkin, 2017). Meanwhile, they are particularly
vulnerable to ‘tech tantrums’ - reward loops and auto-plays make it difficult
for them to manage their online usage because their evolutionary biology (need
to react) is exploited by random rewards and interventions (5Rights, 2018).
For children between 12-15, phone becomes a key social information and
education tool. They start to become more heavily involved in social media
platforms through their devices. A recent report showed that by the age of 13
already (the minimum age to open an account on many social media platforms) ,
more than half of them have a social media profile (Ofcom.org, 2019).
Meanwhile, children at this stage are undergoing significant neuro-
psychological changes, leading to differences in how they perceive emotions
and make decisions (Kidron and Rudkin, 2017; Paulsen et al., 2012). They often
become easily influenced by the content they see as they tend to be
characterised by idealism, with a tendency towards polarised thinking (Temple,
1997; Briones et al., 2013). Today’s children are exposed to the same range of
online risks on mobile platforms, only with risks becoming even more
exacerbated and pervasive.

###  2.2. Theoretical Frameworks For Children’s Online Safety

Safeguarding children during their use of technologies has been a long concern
for parents. With more of these theories being embedded in technical designs
and empirically evaluated, we are seeing a transition of focus from the
parent-centred approach that emphasises on restrictions and family rules, to
the more child-centred approach that encourages self-autonomy and empathy.

####  2.2.1. Parental Mediation Theory: From Pre-Internet Era to Digital
Parenting

The basis of work focusing on ways that parents can regulate their children’s
media habits is grounded in parental mediation theory. Pre-dating the Internet
era, the focus of parental mediation was on children’s TV consumption
(Nathanson, 1999; Valkenburg et al., 1999) and how parents can prevent or
mitigate harmful effects of children’s exposure to increasing amounts of TV
content, in particular, that containing violent and inappropriate themes. It
set up three mediation strategies: _restrictive mediation_ , setting rules and
regulations about children’s television viewing, _co-view_ , simply watching
television with children, and _active mediation_ , or talking with children
about the content they saw on television. With increasing concern over risks
beyond media exposure, parental mediation theory has been adapted to
incorporate these broader concerns regarding children’s online safety. It was
refocused to the goal of minimising online risks in general while maximising
opportunities for children (Livingstone and Helsper, 2008; Mesch, 2009). This
change of context required considerable refinements to the constructs of
existing theories. Restrictive mediation, for instance, was recast to refer to
parents setting the family’s rules and boundaries around online activities.
While the restriction of television media consumption was relatively easy as
parents can take guidance from television program classification (Clark,
2011), online restriction requires much more effort from parents as it
involves a great more of diversity. This modern version of restrictive
mediation now also includes some technical means, such as using software
restrictions to limit access to content or screen time (Nikken and Jansz,
2014). Active mediation is still centered around parent-child communication
and refers more specifically to parents’ active efforts to guide, interpret,
and discuss online harms and risk copings with children (Clark, 2011). Co-view
has been replaced by a more “internet-specific” strategy - monitoring
children’s activities online.

####  2.2.2. Teen Online Safety Strategies Framework (TOSS)

The TOSS (Teen Online Safety Strategies Framework) proposed by Wisniewski et
al. (Wisniewski et al., 2017) made a novel attempt of highlighting the gap
between a parent-centred and a child-centred mediation approach, see Figure 1.
TOSS is a theoretically derived conceptual framework of teen online safety
strategies, comprised of two main strategies - parental control, which was
originally derived from parental mediation theory; and teen self-regulation -
the framework extends the mediation theory by introducing a complementary set
of strategies centred around the child/teenager orientated around teen self-
regulation.

As shown in Figure 1, the parental control strategies contain three sub-
strategies, including monitoring, restriction, and active mediation. The teen
self-regulation strategies comprised self-monitoring, in which children self-
regulate their behaviors through self-observation; impulse control, which
refers to children exhibiting their short-term desires in favor of the long-
term consequences; and risk-coping, defined to be a self-regulatory process
that occurs after one found themselves in risks, which typically involves
processes such as problem-solving, advice-seeking and acquiring social
support.

Although originally developed for analysing teen online safety strategies, the
TOSS framework is equally valuable for analysing children online safety
strategies, especially the parental control side of the framework.
Furthermore, the framework provides a useful way for analysing parental
control apps practices. In the original paper the framework was proposed, the
authors used the TOSS framework to analyse features that support parental
control strategies and teen self-regulation strategies (Wisniewski et al.,
2017), and they found that the apps strongly favored features that promote
parental control through monitoring and restricting teens online. The
framework provides the conceptual basis of our work here, which relies on both
Parental Mediation Theory and TOSS. In particular, we used the TOSS framework
as the baseline for our app analysis.

Figure 1. How parental mediation theory changes through the digital age and
how it connects to the TOSS framework

####  2.2.3. Mediation Strategies: A Dynamic Process

Both the parental mediation theory and TOSS categorised the online safety
strategies into distinct types. Previous research argued that the parental
mediation theory tends to address restriction, monitoring, and active
mediation strategies independently of each other (Beyens and Beullens, 2017;
Meeus et al., 2018). However, several studies have challenged the view that
one mediation type should be significantly better or worse than the others.
They instead found that parent-child conflicts depend more on the styles in
which parents provide mediation, regardless it’s restriction, monitoring, or
active (Beyens and Beullens, 2017; Valkenburg et al., 2013). For example,
Valkenburg et al (Valkenburg et al., 2013) suggested that active, monitoring
or restrictive mediation strategies are not in themselves good or bad; their
effectiveness may depend on the style in which parents apply these strategies
to their children. Examples of such styles were adapted from a self-
determination theory viewpoint (Ryan and Deci, 2000), namely controlling,
parents pressuring children to think and behave in certain ways through, for
example, guilt induction or criticism (Fikkers et al., 2017); or autonomy-
supportive, which refers to “structure and guidance but takes the child’s
feelings and perspective seriously providing a convincing rationale for
behavioural requests and rule-making” (Valkenburg et al., 2013); or
inconsistent, in which parents were sometimes strict and at other times
acquiesce to their children (Fikkers et al., 2017).

Similarly, studies on families showed that parents do not use active and
restrictive mediation strategies independently of each other. Instead, parents
who were motivated to play an active part in their children’s online
activities also tend to implement monitoring and restriction through various
active ways (Chen and Chng, 2016). These findings echo similar work that
suggested that parental mediation may be better conceived as a dynamic process
that should integrate into the daily interactions between parents and
children, rather than as a set of distinct strategies implemented separately
(Symons et al., 2017).

####  2.2.4. Online Safety as Skill Development

Parental mediation theory can be dated back to developmental psychology
research in the early 20th century on how children’s developmental could be
guided by interpersonal communication (Reynolds and Darden, 1971). While
parental mediation theory drew upon Bandura’s social learning theory (Bandura,
[n.d.]) that posit parents as ‘role models’ and explore how parental
involvement may mitigate the negative behaviour of children. There has been
another line of work that also originated from interpersonal communication
studies, but place at the center of the investigation the children and their
interactive experiences with adults. Vygotsky (Chaiklin et al., 2003)
theorised children’s potential for cognitive development using the term ‘zone
of proximate development’. This ‘zone’ describe the things that’s beyond the
children’s current capabilities, but is ‘just about’ to be grasped by them as
long as they are given sufficient ‘scaffolding’ - guidance and support from
more knowledgeable others. A survey of 215 parents and their teens showed that
increased parental control was associated with more (not fewer) online risks
(Ghosh et al., 2018b). On the other hand, a study of 18 U.S. families with
children ages 5-11 found that children largely relied on their parents for
online risks support, and parental scaffolding via conversations and
interactions was an essential part of their rick coping skills development
(Kumar et al., 2017). Similarly, a study with children aged 6-10 in the UK
showed children were well capable of grasping the key ideas of online risks
and develop coping skills, when sufficient scaffolding is given (Zhao et al.,
2019).

###  2.3. Parental Control Apps For Children’s Online Safety

With the increase of digital technologies in families’ life, parental controls
mobile apps are commonly used by parents to mediate their children’s online
usage. Research has been trying to assess how effective these apps are for
safeguarding children online. A review of 75 parental control apps (Wisniewski
et al., 2017) showed that restriction and monitoring approaches were most
common across the commercial market of these parental control apps. A further
study on users’ perspectives found that children mainly felt these apps were
overly restrictive and invasive of their privacy and negatively impacting
their relationship with their parents (Ghosh et al., 2018a). Recent research
also explicitly analysed the linguistic patterns of parent’s reviews versus
children’s reviews on parental control apps and found that tensions were more
likely to occur when apps failed to solve problems regarding children’s safety
(Alelyani et al., 2019). Apart from users’ perceptions, existing literature
also suggested there are significant privacy concerns around these apps. In a
study done on 46 parental control apps, researchers found that 72% of them
share data with third parties without mentioning their presence in privacy
policies (Feal et al., 2020).

Following these understandings, researchers are beginning to explore new ways
to enable this safeguarding. For instance, Ghosh et al. (Ghosh et al., 2020)
proposed Circle of Trust, a parental mediation tool that integrates positive
family values and aims to strike a balance between teen’s privacy and their
online safety. Hashish et al. (Hashish et al., 2014) designed We-Choose, a
tool for controlling content on the smart tablets for children between six to
eight years. It supports collaborative rule-setting by facilitating discussion
on the appropriateness of apps and helping children to review their choices .
Ko et al. (Ko et al., 2015) developed FamiLync, a tool that facilitates
participatory parental mediation by encouraging both parents and children to
participate in co-learning of digital media use. However, we still lack a
systematic understanding of how various parental mediation theories are
currently realised or designed in the commercial market.

##  3\. Methods

We used two pipelines to explore our research questions (see Figure 2), to
analyse app feature designs and their app reviews. Through this, we wanted to
review how parental control is currently realised to identify gaps in the
market and further see how these features are perceived by users.

We particularly aligned our app feature coding with the qualitative feature
analysis conducted by Wisniewski et al. in 2017 (Wisniewski et al., 2017).
Their analysis included 75 Android mobile parental control apps and led to an
identification of 42 app features (e.g. website monitoring, or app activity
blocking) that are mapped to the TOSS conceptual framework (see Figure 1). Our
methodology was based on and extended the work by Wisniewski et al (Wisniewski
et al., 2017). We started by replicating their method for app data acquisition
and then introduced particular analysis about how each of the feature was
realised in the current apps. Our intention to replicate here was not just to
establish a baseline for our further analysis but also because replication is
especially valuable in HCI to analyse quickly evolving phenomena, especially
the design of mobile apps.

Figure 2. Our methodology: we started by replicating the method by Wisniewski
et al (Wisniewski et al., 2017) and used their results as baseline for our
analysis. We then extended our data analysis beyond their methodologies by 1)
analysing how the app features are realised; and 2) conducting a thematic
analysis on parents’ and children’s reviews of these features in order to
identify their positive v.s. negative perceptions.

###  3.1. Collecting Apps

In July through August of 2020, we sought to identify popular Android parental
control applications (“apps”) that promote children’s online safety on Google
Play. In order to effectively compare our analysis with Wisniewski et al.’s
(Wisniewski et al., 2017) analysis of app features in 2017, we adopted their
search keywords (since our research focused on children instead of teens, we
replaced the words “teen” and “adolescent” with “child”). We performed keyword
searches using the terms “online safety,” “family safety,” “child safety,”
“child online safety,” “parental controls,” “parental monitoring,” “child
monitoring,” “cyberbullying,” and “sexting.” Similar to the original method
used by Wisniewski et al (Wisniewski et al., 2017), we also included all
‘similar apps’ that were suggested by the search results, and read each app
description & app screenshots to ensure returned results met the inclusion
criteria, which was that the app had to be designed to support the parental
mediation of children’s online activities.

We generated an initial list of 241 apps. During our process of finding and
filtering through these apps, we found that the popularity (in number of
downloads) of these apps assumed a long tail distribution: nearly 80% of these
241 apps had fewer than 20 downloads, while the more popular apps had multi-
thousands of downloads. Since our intentions were to examine features and
design elements in the most popular apps, we kept the top 66 apps with at
least 10K+ downloads. Among these 66 apps, we further removed the following:
three that required subscriptions to use, two that required SIM cards (which
was not installed on the test device), and three focused on parental control
of IoT devices. Our final app list included 58 apps. Out of these 58 apps,
only 27 of the apps were identical to Wisniewski’s original app list in 2017.
The full list of apps can be found in Appendix.

###  3.2. Analysing App Features

In analysing apps, our goals were twofold: to identify key features that these
apps have, and, second, to identify whether such apps varied in terms of the
ways that such features were realised.

We first generated descriptions of app features by applying a walkthrough
method (Light et al., 2018), first role-playing as a parent and then as a
child using the app. This method is similar to the more commonly used
cognitive walkthroughs (CWs) in usability evaluation (Lewis and Wharton,
1997), in that it is an exploratory screen-by-screen navigation through each
app, role-playing as a particular kind of user. However, there are two
important differences: unlike cognitive walkthroughs, our objective was not to
identify usability problems, but to identify and descriptively characterise
the features of each app. Second, instead of starting with extremely concrete
tasks, we started with the goal of approaching each app as a methodical new
user might, trying all features provided and systematically exploring their
options.

To do this, we installed each app on our devices, in turn. For parenting apps
that came in pairs (corresponding to a parent child version), we installed the
parent app on an Android tablet, and the corresponding child app on an Android
mobile phone. For those apps that were singular apps, we set up the app in
parent mode on the tablet, and installed set up the app in child mode on the
mobile phone. The tablet used for analysis was a Huawei MediaPad M5 with 32GB
of storage running Android 9 and the phone we used was a Samsung Galaxy S20
with 16 GB of storage running Android 9.

Then, two researchers role-played a parent and then a child, on each
respective app, walking through the app a screen at a time to identify
features each app provided. Each feature was examined to identify all options
and functionality. Then, a short textual description was generated for each.

####  3.2.1. Identifying Distinct Features Using TOSS Categories

\- We first analysed these descriptions using a “top-down” approach, applying
the codebook from Wisniewski et al (Wisniewski et al., 2017). Although TOSS
focused on teen self-regulation, we felt it still appropriate as a starting
point for two reasons; first, most such apps did not explicitly designate use
by teens only (vs younger children); second, the emerging literature on online
safety of younger children suggested that establishing safety-related skills
and self-regulation was increasingly pressing in children’s younger years due
to their increased activity online (Kumar et al., 2017). Therefore, we chose
to interpret the teen self-regulation strategies of the TOSS framework as
self-regulation strategies for all children (Wisniewski et al., 2017). Two
researchers coded each feature description against the TOSS feature codebook.
If a particular feature did not correspond to an existing code, we made a note
with a description of its functionality and added it as a new separate feature
into our code book. Cohen’s kappa was calculated to be high ($\kappa=0.83$) on
a hold out sample of 20% of the apps.

####  3.2.2. Feature Design Analysis

\- To explore feature variation, we revisited the feature descriptions and
performed a second round of coding, focusing on _how features was realised_.
This analysis phase was, again, performed by two researchers who sub-divided
the apps. Codes were reconciled, refined, and combined, and then affinity-
clustered based on across all TOSS strategies. This process yielded 22
clusters corresponding to three axes: 6 along _granularity_ , 8 along
_feedback/transparency_ , and 8 along _parent-child communications support_ ,
as we describe in detail in Section 4.2.

###  3.3. Collecting App Reviews

The second analysis pipeline focused on app user reviews; to complement our
app analysis, we sought to collect user reviews of each of the 58 apps to
understand users’ opinions. We scraped all reviews for 58 apps (including the
child app versions) using open source scraping tools (gps, 2020). This
resulted in an initial data set of 93,404 reviews from all 58 apps. Duplicate
reviews were then removed, yielding 81,488 reviews.

####  3.3.1. Selecting app reviews pertaining to specific features

Due to the immense number of reviews being spams, irrelevant, or simple
statements without justification like “It’s good”, we sought to keep only user
reviews that expressed a view about specific TOSS features 111By TOSS feature
here, we are not referring to the original features as in Wisniewski 2017, but
the features we identified using the TOSS framework (with newly identified
features). See Figure 3 for a full list of our TOSS features. with some sort
of justification. Thus, we developed the NLP pipeline to achieve this.

Our pipeline was based on that by Guzman et al. (Guzman and Maalej, 2014). An
initial data processing procedure was done to only keep the nouns, adjectives
and verbs in the reviews. We then used the bigram finding algorithm provided
by the NLTK toolkit (Bird et al., 2009) for extracting user reviews around
specific features (A bigram is a two-word phrase that co-occurs unusually
often). We filtered the bigrams by only considering those that appeared more
than five times and had less than three words distance between them. We then
clustered bigrams whose pairs of words were synonyms using Wordnet (Miller,
1995). After that, we manually reviewed each bigrams cluster to map it to each
TOSS feature (identified in Section 3.2.1). For example, both bigrams clusters
¡limit time¿ and ¡limit screen¿ would belong to the SCREENTIME-BLOCK feature,
which is about limiting screen time. This gave us an indication whether an app
feature was indeed discussed in a review, and hence made it a potentially
‘meaningful’ review.

We then traced back to the original reviews where these bigrams that can be
mapped to a TOSS app feature were extracted from. The author then went through
all of these reviews to manually verify that the corresponding TOSS feature
was indeed mentioned in the review, remove any inconsistent ones and the ones
not about a specific feature. We ended up with a review data set consisting of
3,264 reviews in total.

To identify perception difference between children and parents, we used a
similar method to Ghosh et al (Ghosh et al., 2018a). This means that we also
used certain keywords and phrases to identify posts by parents and children
respectively. Examples indicating a child’s perspective included: “my parent”,
“my mom”, “my dad”, “I’m a kid”, “I’m xx years old”. The two authors manually
reviewed the automatically generated results. Out of the 3,264 reviews, we
identified 746 child reviews and 2,518 parent reviews. We now have a data set
consisting of review around each TOSS features, from children, and parents,
respectively.

###  3.4. Analysing App Reviews

We conducted a thematic content analysis on the final filtered set of reviews
to identify what perspectives parents and children hold in terms of the apps
and their features. So far, the review dataset has been labelled with the TOSS
app feature (e.g. monitoring website) discussed by each review (for filtering
meaningful reviews), and the type of user contributing the review (parent vs.
child). Here, we would like to first identify the feature designs discussed in
each review, and then analyse the perceptions from parents and children about
each feature design — positive or negative.

First, the researchers used a top-down approach to read through each review to
categorise reviews around feature designs (i.e. how a feature is implemented)
we previously compiled in Section 3.2.2. Then, for reviews around each type of
feature designs (e.g. ALL-OR-NOTHING), we used a grounded, thematic approach
(Wildemuth, 2016) to identify themes about why a parent or a child liked or
disliked that feature design. (The final codebook for reviews data can be
found in Appendix)

The thematic coding process was performed by two researchers who sub-divided
the reviews. The hold out sample was 50 reviews (roughly around 35%) for each
feature design (e.g. coarse granularity, low feedback/transparency), with a
Cohen’s kappa of 0.77.

##  4\. Results

###  4.1. App Feature Analysis

Figure 3. Comparing our TOSS feature analysis results with Wisniewski 2017. We
found that in practice, active mediation features were often grounded in
monitoring and restriction features; Also, restriction and monitoring features
came in a great variety of details that was not captured by TOSS (*Previously
TEEN SELF-REGULATION in Wisniewski 2017 original code book)

Applying the TOSS framework (Wisniewski et al., 2017) to categorise app
features, we identified many features that supported both _Monitoring_ and
_Restriction_ strategies. Figure 3 juxtaposes the number of occurrences of
such features we found in our 58 apps against those reported in the original
TOSS paper (Wisniewski et al., 2017). As visible in the figure, the prevalence
of restriction and monitoring features in apps generally increased compared to
the original analysis, suggesting that parental control apps have become more
featureful since 2017.

Moreover, we identified several new features for supporting _Active Mediation_
than in the original study. This includes providing information about apps to
help parents decide whether an app is suitable for their child (APP-INFO), and
features that encourage parents and children to set technology usage rules
together (CO-CONFIG). These features are described in the box in Figure 3. In
terms of teen/child self regulation, we found several features supporting
_Self-Monitoring_ , including sending reports to children regarding their
mobile usage (REPORTING-C), sending app activity logs to children (APP-LOG-C),
and sending browser histories to children (BROWSER-LOG-C).In line with prior
work, we did not find any features belonging to _Impulse Control_ , or any
meaningful _Risk-Coping_ strategies (apart from sending SOS requests).

During the analysis process, we found considerable variation among the designs
of how the features that belonged to a single code were realised. For
instance, among apps that offered functionality logging children’s app usage
(APP-LOG), some apps recorded highly granular detail of the child’s activities
within, and across, particular apps, whilst others only logged events of a
specific type, such as ‘suspicious activities’. This variation was what
inspired us to examine the design axes of variation which we describe in
section 4.2.

Third, we found some features supporting child-empowerment that did not
correspond to any of the three existing TOSS strategies for self-regulation.
Examples included features designed to provide a means for children to inspect
their restriction/monitoring policies (POLICIES INFO), as well as features
that offer children with detailed information about an app, enabling them to
decide what app to use for themselves (APP INFO-C).

Finally, with respect to app features supporting _Active Mediation_ , we found
that rather than being standalone, such features were often contextualised
within other restriction and monitoring features. Examples included messaging
features that let children request more screen time, or access to a restricted
app. Like these, most forms of mediative support concerned restrictions or
monitoring activities. Another type of support included interfaces that
encouraged parents to collaboratively discuss and negotiate restriction and
monitoring policies with their child (CO-CONFIG), instead of encouraging
parents to set such policies without their child’s involvement (e.g.,
SCREENTIME-BLOCK). Even (PARENTING-TIPS), the closest to being a standalone
active mediation feature, was most often associated with tips around
restriction or monitoring strategies.

###  4.2. Feature Design Variations

When looking at how features are specifically realised we identified that they
fell into three axes of variation, including granularity, which refers to the
level of control an app enables parents to do or the level of information
given to the parents, feedback/transparency, which refers to the different
designs that support varied level of information given to the children, and
finally parent-child communication support, which reflect how apps supported
or stimulated discussions between parents and children about their online
activities. These axes of variation offer an orthogonal way of organising the
current parental app design space in comparison to TOSS, allowing us to focus
on the different designs used to support each function. We identified 6
feature designs along granularity, 8 feature designs along
feedback/transparency, and 8 feature designs along communications support that
reported that variation of designs of TOSS features, as summarised in Figure
4.

Figure 4. Three axes of variation along which app feature designs varied.

####  4.2.1. Axes 1: Granularity

We observed that the level of control/information provided by apps for the
parents spanned from very coarse level of granularity, e.g. control/monitor
based on an ALL-OR-NOTHING filtering — parents having to either block all
contents or nothing at all; to highly granular feature designs including
allowing parents to configure control/monitor on a per app basis
(CONTROL/MONITOR-PER-APP).

  1. (1)

(Coarse) ALL-OR-NOTHING : This is a most widely supported design (appearing in
40% of all apps) that spans across all TOSS features. Parents had to either
block all contents and request access to every detail (e.g., every video
watched, website visited, the apps opened, even logging google search &keyword
queries.) about children’s online activities, or gaining no access about
children’s activities at all, leaving no middle ground in between.

  2. (2)

(Medium) CONTROL-CATEGORY/AGE: In comparison to the all-or-nothing approach,
this category allows parents to control children’s access based on app/website
categories. Such categories were usually derived directly from app store
listings or website ratings, and seen to afford parents the convenience of
setting broad policies without concerns over specific apps or websites.

  3. (3)

(Medium) MONITOR-CATEGORY: Provide only high-level summaries of activities
children performed on the phone, such as a list of top contacts, apps used,
and time spent on the device per day. These high-level summaries were
sometimes grouped by app category.

  4. (4)

(Medium) CONTROL/MONITOR-CONTACT-LIST: At this level, parents are given a
chance to provide customised control by providing a list of a pre-approved
contact (or “suspicious” contact list); and when children contact people on
that list, parents will be acknowledged (or showed with texts etc.)

  5. (5)

(Medium) MONITOR-SUSPICIOUS: Similarly, this control of suspicious content can
be automatically achieved by apps, which report and alert parents only based
on “suspicious” or “dangerous” activities, messages, or content.

  6. (6)

(High) CONTROL/MONITOR-PER-APP: At the highest granularity of control, parents
are required to configure settings on a per-app (or website) basis.

####  4.2.2. Axis 2: Feedback/Transparency

By feedback/transparency, we refer to the designs (specifically of monitoring
features) that support variation of the level of information given to
children. While being closely related to the self-monitoring strategies in
TOSS framework, this axis extended and enriched it by adding design variation
details and discussed designs that supports children’s autonomy online. The
variation of these designs ranges from very low feedback/transparency -
providing no information on the screen rules and things being monitored, to
high feedback/transparency - supporting children with resources (e.g. expert
reviews, ratings) to let them decide for themselves what to use.

  1. (1)

(Low) RULES-NO-SHOW: A considerate amount of apps (14%) provided no indication
about the restrictions enforced on children’s phones, leaving them with no
idea of the things they could still do on their phones.

  2. (2)

(Low) MONITOR-NO-SHOW: Nearly a third of the apps in our data set did not
acknowledge children about how their information were being monitored by their
parents.

  3. (3)

(Low) ONLY-RULES-AT-MOMENT: This design shows prompts at the moment e.g. when
children were attempting to access a website on blocking list. However,
children weren’t informed with the screen rules in advance.

  4. (4)

(Medium) RULES-PAGE, provides a means for children to view/inspect the
restrictions policies, giving them more transparency than the designs above.

  5. (5)

(Medium) MONITOR-PAGE, provides some rudimentary information to children about
which activities were being monitored, such as browsing history, app use
history, device use time, or messaging.

  6. (6)

(High) RULES-EXPLAINED, identified in a small number of apps reviews (6%),
offers a clear explanation for children when an activity or action exceeded or
violated a restriction and why that might be bad for children (rather than
simply terminating the activity or giving a generic system error or a blank
screen).

  7. (7)

(High) MONITOR-SELF-TRACK, provides children feedback about their activities
as they used the device, such as how much time they had left (total screen
time or on an app).

  8. (8)

(High) SHOW-KIDS-INFO, again identified in only 6% of all apps, offers
children with detailed information of each app, including expert reviews and
ratings, enabling children to decide what apps to use for themselves.

####  4.2.3. Axis 3: Communications Support

As this dimension is pertained to the ways apps supported or stimulated
discussions between parents and children about their online activities, it is
closely related to previously defined active mediation in TOSS framework.
However, in practice, active mediation features are more about active ways in
which restriction/monitoring can be implemented. This dimension portrayed the
variation of such design details. This was done in two ways: first, through
features that encouraged communication around the restriction and monitoring
policies, and through coaching using discussion aides.

  1. (1)

(Low) NO-MEANS: More than half of the apps (54%) offered no means for children
to negotiate screen rules with their parents, and their only choice was to
accept and obey.

  2. (2)

(Medium) SEND-MESSAGE: In comparison to the complete lack of communication
support, these designs make it simple for children to send a message to their
parents asking for permission to perform a particular restricted activity, or
to grant an exception or extension to a particularly restrictive policy. These
features have been identified in 18% of our apps.

  3. (3)

(Medium) REWARD: Provide extrinsic reward incentives for children to earn
additional screen time, app categories and content, or access to ordinarily
restricted activities.

  4. (4)

(Medium) BOTH DEVICE: We found one app that coach or prompt parents and
children to spend time with each other, e.g., using a family time lock screen
feature for both parents and children’s phones to lock both devices out for a
duration of time per day to encourage both to spend offline time without the
distraction of a screen.

  5. (5)

(Medium) APP-INFO: Provide specific information to help parents ascertain
whether an app was suitable for their children’s use, to understand potential
risks, and other issues about the apps they might want to discuss.

  6. (6)

(Medium) AGE-GROUP-INFO: Help parents to compare their children’s online
activities (usually screen time) in comparison with other kids of the same age
group.

  7. (7)

(High) CO-CONFIG: Provide explicit support that encourages parents and
children to set screen rules together, which included interfaces designed to
serve as boundary negotiating artifacts (Lee, 2007) for a joint resolution of
activity restrictions and monitoring policies.

  8. (8)

(High) PARENTING-TIPS: Offer advice to parents, include strategies ranging
from how to apply restriction/monitoring policies to their children, to how to
talk about sensitive issues such as bullying, stranger danger, online
pornography, and sexting.

###  4.3. Thematic Analysis of Reviews

This section presents an overview of the primary themes pertaining to the
reasons children and parents, respectively, liked or disliked feature designs
provided by parental control apps, and how their perspectives varied across
the axes of different ways in which features were realised.

####  4.3.1. Coarse Granularity

We first start with perceptions around granularity - how different feature
designs varied in granularity influenced users’ perceptions of features. For
coarse granularity, we specifically refer to the features that are based on
ALL-OR-NOTHING filtering. Parents had to either block all contents/shown with
every detail (e.g., every video watched, website visited, the apps opened,even
logging google search & keyword queries.) about children’s online activities,
or having no access at all, leaving no middle ground in between. Both parents
and children, children in particular, expressed grievances on these features:

Disliked being overly surveilled and restricted [C] \- The most common
grievance of children regarding ALL-OR-NOTHING was the view that these designs
not only enabled but nudged parents to set up overly restrictive controls and
excessive surveillance. Kids expressed resentment at the extent of both the
restrictions and their surveillance, and reflected on the effects lives,
welfare, and activities:

> This literally blocks everything, I can’t even read e-books on my phone.

> This is insane. Now they can see EVERYTHING! From my browsing history to
> what apps I downloaded, even my texts! Worst app ever!

Kids reflected on a variety of secondary effects of excessive restrictions and
surveillance. One child discussed that they felt that, beyond violating their
privacy, it was particularly wrong that their parents’ access to their
messages would compromise their friends’ privacy as well:

> they can eves drop on your convos and stuff that you dont want them to hear
> […] not only is it a violation of my privacy that i didnt permit, but it is
> of friends too that parents dont know about

The pervasiveness and constancy of surveillance made it feel to one as if
these apps enabled their parents to “stalk” them:

> I hate this app my mom is like stalking my life!!

Even when not restricted, the perception that their social communications were
being surveilled by their parents had a chilling effect that indirectly forced
them to cease communicating and be cut off from their friends.

> I can’t talk with my friends anymore, everything will be recorded!

Several comments discussed longer-term effects such restrictions were having
on their well-being. One view was that restrictions were directly and
immediately harmful because they broke essential lines of social support.

> This is stupid. absolutely awful. this will ruin people’s lives. I had
> severe depression and the only thing keeping me from killing my self was my
> friend who I could only talk to online. Now I’m fine but if I lose contact
> with that friend I will most likely get my depression back. Horrible and
> stupid app.

Beyond cutting off lines of social support, restrictions were seen to prevent
kids from apps and activities that they normally used to cope with boredom and
isolation, further undermining well-being:

> I can’t play a lot of games, and I can’t watch YouTube. I’ve sat in my room
> for weeks doing nothing and practically getting depressed because there is
> literally NOTHING I can do!

Beyond the social and emotional aspects of children’s lives, a few comments
connected these restrictions to developmental and educational harms-namely,
how such restrictions impeded learning by depriving them of experiences and
learning opportunities:

> The internet is where kids discover and learn new things. And by restricting
> it, you’re denying them that ability.

We don’t want to know everything [P] \- Interestingly, the most common
comments regarding ALL-OR-NOTHING from parents were the complaints that the
app is showing them too many things while leaving them with too few choices.
Parents expressed resentment in terms of wanting to be able to do more
tailored controls based on children’s individual needs:

> You either completely stop your kids from using their phone, or absolutely
> no rules. It’s just so silly, don’t they know kids these days need to do
> homework ONLINE?

With regard to monitoring features, parents showed confusion and some reported
lost in the vast amount of information given by the apps:

> I don’t want to know everything! What’s the point of showing all these
> location info to me? I’m not a control freak! I just want to protect him
> from the crazy stuffs online, that’s all!

We do want to know everything [P] \- On the other hand, some parents cherished
being able to know every single detail of their children’s lives, and that led
on to them expressing multiple opposing views around children’s rights to
privacy - whether children deserved any rights to privacy at all. One stated
that since parents were paying for the phone, they should be able to set the
rules:

> Don’t listen to these spoiled children. I pay the bills. I control the
> phone. You want to control you pay the bills! Very very simple equation!
> It’s a shame how kids here actually can fathom the thought of “rights” while
> living in their parents’ home. Who made that joke up?

In some cases, parents also talked about how their duty as parents to keep
kids safe outweighed any claim to rights:

> When it comes to social media, kids don’t need privacy. It’s not even about
> the child as much as it is about others preying on them. I would hope none
> of the negative reviews are from parents. You should monitor everything your
> children do. That is our job as parents.

A more lenient version of this was the view that rights to autonomy/privacy
should be an earned privilege, not a fundamental right:

> If you want more trust privacy, prove you can handle it with good choices to
> show your parents you are trustworthy!

Others viewed their children as being too young to make decisions for
themselves until they become adults, regardless of their age:

> It’s not that we don’t trust them, but studies show they can’t make
> decisions or assess risk like adults can until age 25 or so.

####  4.3.2. High Granularity

The other extreme along the granularity axis is the feature designs that are
highly granular - for this, we specifically refer to the designs that allow
parents the freedom to configure apps, websites, videos on a “per item” basis
(CONTROL/MONITOR-PER-APP). Parents were now able (sometimes even required) to
refine the specific controls/monitoring they want.

Lost in choices due to lack of support [P] \- As we observed earlier, many
parents brought up how they’d like to be able to do more refined
configurations when they mediate their children’s online activities. However,
when actually offered with these choices, several of the parents’ comments
expressed confusion and disappointment regarding these designs. One common
complaint was that they simply don’t have the time to go through each settings
one by one, and they don’t have the time to review each app to see if it needs
to be banned:

> I’m a working mum with a full time job with three kids. Although I
> appreciate the app designers’ efforts in letting us make the decision. It’s
> just not practical for us working parents to go through all the apps one by
> one.

In some cases, parents talked about how frustrated they were as they felt they
were indirectly accused as irresponsible parents, and they were “nudged” to go
back to banning everything:

> I don’t see the point in letting us choose which videos for children to
> watch. One, I can’t sit through everything they watch, I have a job. Two,
> 5-year-olds quickly get bored of the old ones and they want more. This so-
> called “refinement” just gave me two choices: either let them watch whatever
> they want (God knows what’s on there), or bans the whole platform.

In most cases, parents expressed their needs for supporting resources that
help them make restriction/monitoring rules:

> I really wish there’s something like an app version of the tv age guide.

####  4.3.3. Medium Granularity

Feature designs of medium granularity offer a middle ground for parents to
mediate their children’s online activities, without being too coarse or
requires too much effort. Designs like this includes control/monitor based on
app/website categories or age ratings; or control/monitor of contacts based on
a parent-pre-approved contact; or apps reported and alerted parents only based
on “suspicious” or “dangerous” activities, messages, or content.

Protection, not punishment: achieving a successful middle ground [P] \-
Parents were generally positive about the apps that offer feature designs of
medium granularity, and they saw achieving a successful middle ground being
essential for striking a balance between protection and respect for their
children. This was seen not only as convenient for parents, but also
supporting setting of boundaries in a more flexible manner. Similarly, both
parents and children appreciated how some apps enabled different children,
especially older ones, with different level of freedom:

> I love how this app allows us to reach balance. The app only alerts us when
> it detects something unusual, we can adjust the things he could access as he
> gets older.

And when such balance was achieved, parents generally saw the parental control
apps as effective at helping them support their primary goal, which was to
keep their children safe. These parents felt such apps gave them “peace of
mind”:

> I love this app. I have a 10 year old son that I just recently found out was
> doing inappropriate things on the Internet with his phone, like viewing porn
> […] but with this app I Have some peace of mind. I have full control of what
> he downloads and views […] all form [sic] my device.

Reasonable safe zone [C] \- Similarly, when app designs managed to help strike
a balance between protection and punishment, children regarded them as
effective and reasonable at protecting them from dangers online:

> Not too bad, I guess a bit boundary is necessary, at least I still have
> access to things I love.

> This is just great. It allows age-appropriate control, so giving us more
> freedom as we get older.

####  4.3.4. Low Feedback/Transparency

A second axis of feature design variation we looked at is
feedback/transparency, and how users’, especially children’s perceptions
varied across different designs along this axis. The designs came in various
details along their ability of supporting children to have sufficient feedback
and transparency, thus to allow them to learn and understand the screen rules,
as well as learn more about their own activities online. For low
feedback/transparency, we refer to the designs that support very little or no
means for children to become acknowledged of these things. Typical designs
include apps provided no indication about the restrictions enforced on
children’s phones, leaving them with no idea of the things they could or could
not do on their phones; apps did not acknowledge children about what
information of them can be seen by parents; and apps only showed prompts at
the moment when children were attempting to access content, however, they did
not inform children with the screen rules in advance.

Insecure, and not respected[C] \- Both children and parents, children in
particular, expressed their dislike of feature designs that supported no
feedback/transparency, which were sadly the most common feature designs. Rules
without prior acknowledgment were sometimes presumed to be annoying by
children. For example, both parents and children brought up that prior
warnings on time remaining are important. Otherwise, children will feel upset
due to the sudden cut-off. Children complained about how some app did not let
them know what their screen rules were when such system was missing, and
children found themselves in the position of having to work things out based
on trial-and-error:

> I constantly get these error messages with blank pages, is that part of the
> screen rules or just an error?

In terms of monitoring, children felt insecure when not knowing what their
parents can see about them:

> Can they see all my texts too? That would be creepy.

####  4.3.5. High Feedback/Transparency

Feature designs that were of high feedback/transparency includes designs not
only provided children with means of viewing/inspecting the restriction
policies but also offered a clear explanation on why the screen rules were
made and why accessing restricted content might be bad for them. In terms of
monitoring, features designs that support high feedback/transparency include
the ones that provided children with feedback about their activities (allowing
children to do self-monitoring), and offered children with detailed
information about each app, including expert reviews and ratings and enabling
children to decide what apps are good to use for themselves.

Keeping them safe and productive [C] \- Both parents and children liked
feature designs that supported children’s understanding of their online
boundaries. In terms of restriction, both parents and children brought up how
they liked apps offering children with clear screen rule pages so their
children would be better informed instead of suffering from being turned down
at the moment when they were trying to do some online activities. In
particular, many kids pointed out how they liked being offered with
explanations on why a website/app was blocked, which made them feel less
confused and more respected as a consequence:

> Not the best but definitely better than the previous one. Now I know why the
> websites are blocked. They give you reasons and things like that. I mean, I
> disagree with them all the time, but at least they tried to show some
> respect!

When children understood why the apps were for, they reported more positively
about the apps. Several of the comments by children pointed out that the apps
helped to keep them safe online from inappropriate things:

> I know this may sound crazy from the kids view, but I love this now! It fits
> me and my phone perfectly, and my mom knows that I am safe on my phone
> without having to go to any other horrible apps.

Other children who suffered from addiction online appreciated how the apps
dragged them out of that cycle:

> This is AWESOME! I’m a kid so I got this app in order to keep myself in
> check on my screen time because I am an internet addict. I’m so much happier
> now! It makes it absolutely impossible to get around!

Beyond the positive impacts online, children also appreciated how the apps
helped with their time offline. Some children commented that they were now
able to become more productive and spend more time with their families:

> When my mom and dad put this on my phone and tablet at first I hated it. but
> then I realised with a limited amount of time I spent more time with my
> family and do actual work. I hope this inspires you to limit yourself with
> the amount of time you spend staring at useless junk.

Supporting them to make own decisions [C] \- In particular, children reported
positively about designs that offer them with detailed information (including
expert reviews and ratings) of each app. They talked about how they cherish
being respected to make their own decisions on what is best for themselves:

> They tell you what others said about this app, but let you decide to use it
> or not – it’s my call.

####  4.3.6. No/Little Communications Support

A third axis of feature design variation was _parent-child communications
support_. Specifically, we looked at how features were perceived differently
due to the variation of communications support designs they came in with. For
little communications support, we refer to the designs that first, did not
offer any explanation helping children to understand their screen rules, and
also, offered none or very little means for children to negotiate screen rules
with their parents, leaving them with the only choice - to accept and obey.

Role of Parenting Apps: Unnecessary, Punishment, or Lazy Parenting [C] \- When
the purpose of these apps were not communicated with children, several of the
children’s comments expressed confusion or questioned the role these apps in
keeping them safe. One child viewed that these apps were fundamentally
redundant because they were already old enough or competent enough to keep
themselves safe:

> I’m a 4.0 student. Who is able to manage her school work and screen time by
> herself thank you very much. I’m old enough to know what’s good and bad, I
> can’t change the settings and there no way to let my mom know that.

Other kids lamented that these apps were unnecessary because kids could be
told what to do and trusted to keep what they were told. In a sense, the use
of apps to force represented a failure of trust.

> How bout you try and talk to them about your phone usage first, see if
> they’ll make a change for you first, then go from there. Think twice before
> you destroy you kid’s trust like this. I understand there’s kids who need to
> get their head straight. But for those like me who are focused in school and
> a well-rounded kid, I feel all you need to do is talk to them.

The perception that parents were not trusting them made children question the
point of these apps. In some cases, children regarded the use of these apps as
purely for punishment.

> If you are a parent that wants this app I would reconsider getting this and
> punish your child a different way. Instead of us being punished, parents
> should be blamed for dictating their children to use this app.

Some children continued to criticise the bad parenting styles that these apps
nudged their parents into. Apart from parents being overly-protective (as we
previously reported), children also accused parents of being lazy and using
the apps as substitutes for parenting.

> Yes, it’s good to be one step ahead, but having an app to do it for you? You
> might as well call child protective services if you’re that lazy.

####  4.3.7. High Communications Support

Designs that were of high communications support mainly came in two ways:
first, through features that encouraged communications around the restriction
and monitoring policies and through coaching using discussion aides. These
includes designs such as apps enabling children to negotiate their rules with
their parents, apps providing explicit support that encouraged parents and
children to set screen rules together, and apps offering advice to parents -
strategies ranging from how to apply restriction/monitoring policies to their
children to how to talk about sensitive issues.

Feeling of being respected [C] \- When children were given the chance to
communicate and negotiate with their parents, they felt they were part of the
decision and they generally respected the rules more. In particular, they
loved the co-configuration designs that allowed them to sit down with their
parents to reach mutual agreement on their boundaries:

> My parents sat down with me to go through this “setting rules together”
> thing, and I can send a request to them whenever I felt the restrictions are
> unfair. Love it!

Supports, rather than enacts parenting[P] \- Meanwhile, parents also reported
their favour towards feature designs that supported or coached them on
conversations with their children. And they found designs like parenting tips
particularly useful. Some parents felt that they were supported by the app
without being hijacked by it.

> This is a great tool. Easy to communicate. Easy to adjust. I use this tool
> to help, but in noway does it replace being a good parent watching over
> their child. It should not be the only arrow in your quiver, and you should
> not expect it to do your parenting for you.

##  5\. Discussion

###  5.1. Connecting Feature Designs to Parental Mediation Theory

Given the potential for both detrimental and beneficial effects of restriction
and monitoring, and the likelihood that these strategies will remain important
aspects of many parents’ mediation strategies for the foreseeable future, can
we strike a balance? Specifically, how might apps play a role in fostering a
more responsible, considered, and appropriate use of these strategies? To
answer these questions, we first reflect on whether some of our findings
related to the feature design space described in Section 4.2 might help. The
three axes deal with very different aspects of parenting support and thus take
each in turn.

Starting with the first axis, _granularity_ was associated with the degree and
detail with which parents could control and monitor children’s activities.
This axis was directly related to the “restrictive mediation” from parental
mediation theory (Livingstone and Helsper, 2008). Beyenes et al. (Beyens and
Beullens, 2017) found that restrictive mediation leads to increased conflicts
between parents and children . Nathanson (Nathanson, 2013) argued that
children might exhibit more disobedience and rebelliousness against parents
under restrictive mediation . Ghosh et al. (Ghosh et al., 2018b) also found
that teens who were victimized online and had peer problems were more likely
to be controlled and monitored by their parents. These previous findings
reinforce our analysis, such that a balance between restriction and children’s
autonomy is much needed. The use and application of highly granular
restrictions provides more flexibility for the parents but they can also be
seen as overly demanding - parents need to be familiar with all the apps and
websites their children could possibly access. On the other hand, the coarsest
(all-or-nothing) controls were generally seen as less desirable because such
apps denied children access to basic, risk-free, and unproblematic aspects of
their devices that they deemed essential. The former takes a parent-centric
view whilst permits limited inputs from children; and the latter is a close
representation of an authoritarian parental approach (Darling, 1999), which
has been deemed to decrease children and parents’ mutual trust and the
development of children’s self-autonomy (Ghosh et al., 2018b; Mensah and
Kuranchie, 2013) Various kinds of “medium granularity” identified in this
research (e.g controlling by categories) were deemed most favoured by many
parents because of the simplicity such granularities afford. Such abstractions
encourage slightly less parental involvement because of the way they
homogenise the treatment of different apps in the same category; without
requiring parents to be deeply involved with the particular risks, details or
benefits of specific apps.

With respect to _transparency/feedback_ , this axis dealt with the extent to
which children remain informed of their own online activities and screen
policies. By clearly establishing what was being restricted, monitored, and
why, children could understand the boundaries of their parents’ control so
that they could negotiate their activities within and around such barriers. As
such, this axis was most directly aligned with aspects of active _self-
regulation_ (Fingerman et al., 2011; Kopp, 1982; Moilanen et al., 2015) but
it’s more than that - through empowering children with information and choices
about their own behaviors online, as well as supporting resources such as
information or expert ratings on particular apps, children were given the
opportunity to make more responsible decisions for themselves - one of the key
outcomes from an active mediation approach (Shin and Lwin, 2017). Less
feedback and transparency could be seen as _more privacy-invasive and autonomy
restrictive_ , making it less clear or visible when and what parents would be
watching. Much like Bentham’s panopticon (Strub, 1989), less transparency can
be seen as undermining children’s rights by creating a perpetual spectre of
possible observation.

Regarding _communications support_ , this axis was most closely related to the
“active mediation” from parental mediation theory, in which communication is
the core (Livingstone and Helsper, 2008; Lee and Chae, 2007; Nikken and Jansz,
2014). Previous studies found that active mediation was associated with lower
levels of aggression children (Collier et al., 2016), and that active
mediation may reduce online risks without hindering children’s online
opportunities (Duerager and Livingstone, 2012; Wisniewski et al., 2015).
Kuppens et al. (Kuppens and Ceulemans, 2019) found that children who
experienced frequent discussions about online activities with parents were
more likely to regard control/monitoring as legitimately in their best
interests . While being closely related to active mediation, this axis was
more than that. It dealt with providing supports for parent-child interactions
in several forms; one was parental informational support, which comprised both
_general parenting advice_ pertaining to ways to talk to children about their
online activities and risks, and _specific information_ about particular apps
and activities. Other support includes encouraging the co-setting of
restrictions and monitoring practices, allowing children to be involved in the
configuration of such activities, and can have significant benefits in terms
of how they view such activities as a result (Kuppens and Ceulemans, 2019).

We contend that granular restrictions and monitoring support
active/authoritative parenting (Darling, 1999) by increasing the flexibility
and means by which parents can remain in-the-loop of, and control over,
children’s activities. However, we argue that our finding shows that this is
only true for apps which also had a high degree of _transparency/feedback_
(axis 2), as well as high _communications support_ (axis 3). Such capabilities
are essential for enabling children to understand restrictions, monitored
activities, and goals (transparency/feedback), providing a means of
understanding of the context and purpose of these restrictions, and a means of
digitally facilitating discussion, negotiation, or relaxation of such policies
(communications support). Without such feedback, monitoring and restrictions
are most directly aligned to _authoritarian parenting_ (Ford et al., 1985;
Darling, 1999) by enabling precise control and detailed monitoring without
associated feedback, transparency, or support for negotiation or
communications. Parental mediation theory categorised parental mediation
strategies into distinct types, namely restrictive, monitoring and active
(Livingstone and Helsper, 2008). However, a new view of parental mediation as
a continuous, dynamic process is supported by recent empirical and theoretical
literature, including work by Symonds et al. (Symons et al., 2017), who
proposed that parental mediation be viewed as a dynamic integrative process
that brings strategies into the daily interactions between parents and
children. Other studies that support this view similarly found that parents
tended not to use restrictive, monitoring, or active mediation strategies
independently, but in ways that supported each other (Beyens and Beullens,
2017; Meeus et al., 2018), while Chen et al. (Chen and Chng, 2016) suggested
that mediation such as restriction and monitoring were most effective when
they were implemented in an active way. Our findings reinforced this new look
of the parental mediation approaches: restrictive and active mediations are
not in and of themselves good or bad; rather, their effectiveness may be
highly dependent on the style in which parents apply these strategies with
their children (Valkenburg et al., 2013; Chen and Chng, 2016). The feature
designs along three axes (granularity, transparency/feedback, communications
support) align perfectly with these arguments - instead of considering
features as separate categories, the axes of variation reflect the designs on
how strategic elements can be combined, and implemented in a lesser or greater
extent - overlapping and reinforcing each other, in an overall dynamic
process.

###  5.2. Revisiting the TOSS Framework

Figure 5. Revisiting the TOSS Framework. a). The TOSS framework looks at what
features are supported b). Our Axes of Variation complement the TOSS framework
by adding orthogonal dimensions of how features were implemented. c). As a
result, our three axes of variation allow us to identify a Zone of Best
Practice, this also shows that most of the apps on the current market fall
outside of this zone.

Our analysis offered empirical evidence that suggests that the ways in which
features are designed influence users’ perceptions of features in parental
control apps. In particular, we found that parents and children’s perceptions
of features varied significantly across the three axes designs variation. For
example, for a single restriction feature such as APP-BLOCK, when implemented
differently, such with features for supporting parents-child negotiation, were
viewed more positively than when apps offered no such means at all.

Instead of viewing app features as belonging to separate independent mediation
strategies as TOSS does, we prefer to view such features as playing variable
roles in mediation strategies articulated by many factors including their
design. We feel that our axes of variation can be seen as an extension to the
TOSS framework, orthogonal to its categorisation of features by strategy, that
provides a view to the ways such features should be designed. In particular,
by looking at the areas along each of the axes that correspond to the most
positive comments, we can identify a Zone of Best Practice, corresponding to
the regions of the feature design space viewed most positively by parents and
children. For granularity, the designs that were of medium level of
granularity were perceived as helping to strike a balance between protecting
children online, while leaving them with enough space to learn and explore
online - such designs include configurations on categorical level or age
ratings, managing contacts based on a parent-pre-approved list, or only
alerting parents when “suspicious” or “dangerous” activities were identified.
For feedback/transparency, the most welcomed designs were those that provided
support for children to remain informed of their screen rules, their own
activities online, and support them to make decisions for themselves online -
good design practices include panels that show children explicit information
on their own online activities, pop ups that explain why certain screen rules
were made for them, and info panels that offer children with detailed
information of each app, thus enabling themselves to decide what apps to use.
For communications support, the most welcomed designs were those that
encourage negotiation between parents and children, and support parents with
information and resources to start those conversations - e.g. co-configuration
panels that encourage parents and children to set screen rules together, pop
up parenting tips that offer advice to parents. Unfortunately, our analysis
also found that most existing apps fell outside this zone for many of their
features.

###  5.3. Opportunities for more autonomy-supportive parental mediation

One of the major problems with restriction and monitoring is the extent to
which these strategies reduce children’s autonomy and violate their privacy.
How might apps be made to be more autonomy-supportive, especially in the long
term? Our view is that the inherent problem with the parental control apps we
reviewed is that they were focused exclusively on effective restriction and
monitoring, instead of digital parenting. Instead of framing restrictions and
monitoring as protective measures to be used in perpetuity, for instance, a
digital parenting app might not only include support for other TOSS strategies
(such as impulse control), but also re-frame restriction and monitoring as a
means of skills scaffolding (Hammond et al., 2012; Bibok et al., 2009).
Starting with the most supportive scaffolding (maximum restrictions and
monitoring) for the very young and most vulnerable, such apps could then align
the gradual removal of restrictions and monitoring measures with milestones as
children get older, or demonstrate the ability to recognise and cope with
online risks. Then, as their needs for autonomy and privacy needs change,
typically peaking by mid-teenage years (Arnett, 2000), such restrictions
should probably reach a minimum at such an age. However, if children require
special support such scaffolds could be seen as flexible as needed. Such a re-
framing would address several of the children’s comments we found, especially
relating to children seeing restrictions as pointless and infantilising, and
supporting them as they grow older, so as to not be seen to hold them back.

Another re-framing that might provide protection against overuse of
restriction and monitoring is to frame such measures as options of last
resort, after other more autonomy-confirming strategies fail. Primary
autonomy-confirming strategies for older children might instead include, for
example, simple verbal agreements about limits on online activity which
require children to take responsibility for their actions. Such a shift would
be in line with the literature on autonomy-supportive parental mediation,
which requires a “convincing rationale for rule-making” (Haddon, 2015). We
propose that similarly, requiring a convincing rationale to justify the use of
restriction and monitoring features might ensure that they are used only as
necessary.

##  6\. Limitations and Future Work

There are several important limitations of this work; the first pertains to
the app analysis; our sample of parental control apps were taken only from the
Android UK Google Play store, and thus may vary significantly by region. Due
to a feasibility constraints we were only able to analyse 58 of these apps,
out of the massive growing pool available. The second most significant
limitation is that we based our analysis on reviews available in the wild.
There are obvious limitations of trying to use reviews as “vessels of truth”;
namely, they could be fabricated by bots, or, even if genuine, could represent
a skewed non-representative sample of particularly angry or passionate people.
We attempted to mitigate some of these possibilities several ways, one was by
using a process of filtering reviews to carefully select only those discussing
specific aspects of apps. Moreover, we avoided deriving any conclusions
through quantitative measures which would be distorted; instead, we used
reviews only to collate reasoned perspectives about features.

Nonetheless caution should still be exercised using any app reviews for
deriving any sort of definitive conclusions about causal relationships, for
instance, relating app use to children’s welfare or safety. Our contributions
thus should be interpreted as a high-level understanding of the design space
of features of parental control apps, with evidence that might suggest regions
most promising for further exploration. Our future work would involve actually
working with parents and children to get more direct inputs. We hope our
contributions could guide others navigate the space of parental control apps,
for running field studies of the effectiveness of specific feature designs.

Apart from that, this work adopted a ground-up approach as well as being
guided by the TOSS framework, instead of a value-driven approach. Therefore,
we did not take a full consideration of the different cultural and parenting
styles intrinsically embedded in different cultures and societal values, which
would benefit from future work.

##  7\. Conclusion

Parental control apps are being increasingly seen as the answer to online
safety concerns parents have for their children (Ofcom.org, 2019). However,
increasing evidence suggests that such apps may be bringing with them new
kinds of harms associated with excessive restrictions and privacy invasion
(Wisniewski et al., 2017; Ghosh et al., 2018a). This paper is the first to
contribute an understanding of the design space of the mediation features of
current parental control apps. Then, to identify how such variation might
articulate the use of these apps in practice, we analysed reviews
corresponding to features at various points along each of the axes. Our
findings suggest that apps providing the most transparency and feedback, the
greatest support for parent-child communications, and flexible categories are
most likely to be perceived by both parents and children in positive ways
instead as punitive and detrimental. Contextualising our findings in parental
control theory, we derive at least two approaches that more autonomy-
supportive parental control apps might be achieved. The first, by simply
designing app features to fall along each of the three axes within our
identified “zone of best practice”–designs perceived most positively by both
parents and children. Second, to complement and pair restriction and
monitoring features in an age and skill-appropriate manner. This includes
gradually allowing children to move from strictest monitoring and restriction
features to gain more autonomy, as they develop necessary skills associated
with recognising and mitigating online risks.

##  8\. Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the ReEnTrust project from the Engineering and
Physical Sciences Research Council (grant number EP/R033633/1) and Oxford
Univeristy COVID-19 Rebuilding Research Momentum Fund (0010067).

##  Appendix A Appendix

Figure 6. App List with Icons Figure 7. Final Codebook for Reviews. Reviews
were first organised using Feature Designs Codebook we previously compiled in
Section 3.2.2. Then, we used a grounded, thematic approach (Wildemuth, 2016)
to identify themes about why a parent or a child liked or disliked that
feature design.

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