Privacy challenges in children's online presence - from the developers' perspective

Abstract

Parents nowadays are facing with the fact that their children are using apps like TikTok or Instagram, and have the same question as millions of other dads and moms: how can they protect their beloved from the dark side of internet? Most parents are anxious about their kids’ online presence, but they don’t have the right tools to protect them. Teens feel that they neither can find useful information, nor turn to their parents for advices to protect themselves. There are two options: parental control and educational software. For the first one, there are nearly 140 software for parents. Mostly they offer the same: filtering, banning, spying. These solutions are not just ineffective, because the kids can circumvent the solutions, but usually deepen the issue between the teenagers and their parents. The latter one is too generic, and do not provide hands-on tips. Mongu for Teen is an educational app designed for 9-13-year-old kids and their parents that gives a solution for this problem. In our paper, we highlight the current threats to children’s online privacy, the European legislation, that aims to protect them and as a case study, our experiences how a developer should follow this privacy regulation and how effective can be an eduware to improve the privacy awareness of digital families.