Privacy for Children and Teenagers on Social Networks from a Usability Perspective: A Case Study on Facebook

Children and teenagers comprise a user group particularly susceptible to privacy infringement risks in Online Social Networks (OSNs). In this sense, the usability of privacy controls should be appropriate to such users. This study aims to characterize, through a case study on Facebook, how children and teenagers deal with privacy features on OSNs and whether the available privacy controls help this user group to manage the privacy levels of their personal data. The case study considered children and teenagers in Brazil, the top-3 country on the number of Facebook users. The results indicated that there are usability violations that hinder this group from adjusting privacy settings, compromising its privacy and security on OSNs. These results are relevant and not limited to the context of Brazil, because they warn us about the vulnerability of children and teenagers on OSNs, as well as they evince the role of usability in privacy controls.