Young children on TikTok:an interview study of Finnish parents

Abstract. Social media has been in an era of change since TikTok has entered the market with its virality. TikTok is most popular among younger children aged between eight and twelve years old, the platform has gathered attention of many. Both research and media have shown their interest around the topic. Research has publications from multiple different disciplines ranging from medical publications to studies done in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI). This study investigates what possible threats TikTok can bring to children and what is the parents’ role in addressing these threats. By identifying these threats can they be lessened and discussed to promote healthy social media use among children. A semi-structured interview was conducted with five Finnish parents to find out what the parents are doing to guard their children from TikTok’s threats and what threats have the parents found to come true regarding their children and TikTok use. The results indicate that parents believe TikTok is prone to promote addiction and eating disorders. Stranger danger, cyberbullying, harmful content, anti-privacy advice, unhealthy marketing, hate speech and misinformation are also possible threats of TikTok use for children. The possible negative effects of TikTok for children are varying and parents have a leading role in moderating social media use of children. Communicating and educating the children is to be highlighted and parents need to model a healthy relationship with social media for children. Future research should further investigate how addiction can influence children who use TikTok. Also, the technical solutions to protects children from threats on TikTok is a worthy research area for future

Risk Communication Framework for Parental Control in the Digital World

The Internet is growing rapidly and is becoming an essential part of children’s lives. Internet use has many benefits for learning, participation, creativity, entertainment and communication. Along with such benefits, however, Internet use might expose children to a wide range of online risks. Some of those risks, such as bullying, exposure to pornography, and sexual exploitation, are known in the offline world but there are also new ones, such as the invasion of personal data and privacy, geolocation tracking, sexual messaging and harassment. Unfortunately, the existing mechanisms for protecting children online are ineffective. The parental controls currently available focus on monitoring and restrictive functions to reduce potential online risks, which might not satisfy the expectations of young people who want unrestricted freedom to use the Internet. Parental controls also demonstrate shortcomings in increasing parents’ awareness of the risks that their children may encounter. Parents not only need to be aware of their children’s online activities, but also to understand and mitigate the potential risks associated with their children’s online activities. Young people might engage in online behaviours that expose them to risk, although not all risk leads to harm. Therefore, parental controls should improve parents’ awareness of the potential security risks related to their children’s online activities, so that they can support their children’s use of the Internet, enhance their opportunities and help them develop the coping skills to deal with potential risk. The present research suggests applying a risk communication mechanism to parental controls to raise the security awareness for parents and children in order to help them make safe decisions and reduce online risks. Firstly, this research proposes a risk assessment model that assess the risk levels of children’s online activities in order to warn parents and children about them in an individualised, timely, and continuous way. The proposed system also provides appropriate protection responses to avoid those risks. Secondly, a prototype system has been designed and developed to simulate the proposed system and provide a clear image of its functionalities and how it works. After implementing the prototype system, it was important to have parents evaluate its usability and usefulness. The participants were able to use the system and were satisfied in terms of its overall appearance and the functions provided. They agreed and prefer to use the system in real life. It can also be stated that the overall feedback from the participants regarding the proposed system was very encouraging and positive.Shaqra University, Shaqra, Saudi Arabi