“They See You’re a Girl if You Pick a Pink Robot with a Skirt”: A Qualitative Study of How Children Conceptualize Data Processing and Digital Privacy Risks

As children become frequent digital technology users, concerns about their digital privacy are increasing. To better understand how young children conceptualize data processing and digital privacy risks, we interviewed 26 children, 4 to 10 years old, from families with higher educational attainment recruited in a college town. Our child participants construed apps’ and services’ data collection and storage practices in terms of their benefits, both to themselves and for user safety, and characterized both data tracking and privacy violations as interpersonal rather than considering automated processes or companies as privacy threats. We identify four factors shaping these mental models and privacy risk perceptions: (1) surface-level visual cues, (2) past digital interactions involving data collection, (3) age and cognitive development, and (4) privacy-related experiences in non-digital contexts. We discuss our findings’ design, educational, and public policy implications toward better supporting children in identifying and reasoning about digital privacy risks.