Should We Design for Control, Trust or Involvement?: A Discourses Survey about Children's Online Safety

Children are growing up in an increasingly digitalized world and concerns for their online safety picture in research and in public debate. We contribute to the discussion about children's online safety through a discourses survey on public discussions carried out in Finland 2014-2015. We reveal that discourses on control, trust and involvement permeate debates on children's online safety, and we argue that this has important implications on the means that we develop for ensuring children's online safety. While some control is needed, instead of risking to lose their children's trust through restricting or monitoring, parents may want to build a trusting relationship with their children so that they can trust children to make good decisions and that the children trust them. There is a need to build technical mediation that is transparent and facilitates building of trust.