1
Introduction
The increasing presence of interactive technologies in children’s lives poses critical
ethical questions for researchers and designers. Discourse specific to these intersecting
topics is nascent, spread across communities and largely developed retrospectively.
In a series of workshops and panels at the annual ACM Interaction Design for Children
(ACM IDC) conference, a small group from the community has aimed to provide a central
space and continuity for this discourse. The most recent of these spaces was the ACM
IDC 2020 workshop entitled, “Emergent, Situated and Prospective Ethics for Child-Computer
Interaction Research” that brought together a small group of researchers interested
in sharing and discussing ethical issues arising when researching, designing, and
deploying technologies for children [1].
When we, as the two main organizers of the workshop, wrote the workshop proposal we
were particularly interested in how the ethical challenges in Child-Computer Interaction
(CCI) were changing in the face of a rapidly changing world. At that time, it was
completely unknown to us how different the world would be when we conducted the workshop.
When the participants eventually met online for this workshop in late June 2020, a
global pandemic had changed public life as we knew it and social justice issues, as
manifested in the Black Lives Matter movement, were causing widespread unrest. Layered
on these immediate challenges was the looming climate crisis that poses one of the
most existential threats to humans yet.
When we ran the workshop, we decided to focus our discussions on sharing thoughts
and experiences of what these monumental shifts might mean for our community. The
question, which we put onto the virtual floor was: How is the ethics of your research
changing in the face of the Covid-19 Pandemic and recent social justice issues, as
manifested in the Black Live Matters movement?
What followed was a rich and thoughtful discussion. Every participant was affected
by the pandemic in different ways, both personally and professionally. In the 45 min
session we had reserved for this part of the workshop, we were all connected via video
link, but also collaboratively worked on a shared virtual whiteboard at the same time.
In a very productive mix of show and tell, we collected sticky notes, online resources,
quotes and other bits of information; all the while making connections and categorizations.
Later, we, as the two main organizers, discussed our observations from the workshop,
and then reviewed the data and our own notes to informally look for themes related
to our original question. We wrote up the themes individually, and worked collaboratively
to refine, clarify, and contextualize them. From this exercise, four main themes emerged,
which all included perceived challenges as well as the participants’ recommendations
for how these concerns might be addressed moving forward. The following briefly summarizes
these themes.
2
Emerging perspectives on Child-Computer Interaction in times of a pandemic
2.1
New and old digital divides made visible
While the CCI community has always been aware of social justice issues around access
to interactive technologies, particularly in the developing world (e.g. [2]), the
pandemic and resulting physical and social isolation has foregrounded new digital
divides that have been largely invisible to many of us working in the developed world.
For example, one researcher shared that they had observed widely varying experiences
around the impact of physical and social isolation on families. In some cases where
children were sequestered at home with parents who worried for their livelihoods,
households were under a tremendous amount of stress [3]. In these cases, there were
severe limits on the amount of time that parents could spend with their children,
struggling to meet the additional demands of scaffolding their children’s educational
objectives, both online and offline. This highlights the realization that dedicated
time in which parents and children can work together in quiet spaces are luxuries
for many regardless of social class or geographical location.
The recognition that technologies for children always re-structure power imbalances,
creating new exclusions and divides in the midst of all of our societies, prompted
us to think of how we could foster awareness and critical reflection on these issues
within the CCI community. There were suggestions, for example, for improving accountability
to social justice issues in our work by developing the required section on participant
selection in the ACM IDC paper submissions template to specifically include a discussion
of how the research addressed issues around the digital divide and how it may restructure
these divides. There was also a suggestion around adding another required section
to this template in which authors envision how the results and/or future products
created through their research would or would not address social justice issues. Other
solutions that specifically addressed the changing needs of children during the pandemic
included researching and developing new forms of remote communication for children,
for example, those that enable children to navigate new ways to form social supports
when they can’t be face to face, and ensuring that these tools are accessible across
the digital divide. For example, the first author has just received Covid-19 specific
funding to work with an industry partner to develop a child-focused version of their
private social network platform1
that supports children to make safe connections and access health literacy programs
and resources targeted to children.
2.2
Digital literacy
Other participants noted that prior to the pandemic researchers recruiting for studies
often experienced a feeling of reluctance from parents, caregivers and/or teachers
to let children participate in interactive technology and/or digital media usage.
They encountered a general and mostly undifferentiated suspicion that additional exposure
to digital technology would result in “too much”. The same researchers mentioned that
they now experience a shift in that parents, caregivers and teachers have appeared
to have swung 180 degrees and now find it desirable to have children participate in
studies that would help them to come up to speed in different areas of digital literacy.
This shift may present an opportunity for the CCI community to contribute beyond academia
to engage with ongoing societal debates with more nuanced views on the purpose and
nature of different interactions with digital technology.
The push in digitalization in areas such as education or communication during the
pandemic seems to have changed many parents’ perception of the digital as something
that goes beyond their children’s entertainment. As researchers and designers, we
have to think more about how to respond to this renewed need to better equip children
and their guardians with competencies that reflect the broad range of aspects of our
lives that digital technologies now have roles in. This may mean highlighting digital
literacy targets during recruitment for studies, but also more dedicated research
into how to scaffold the learning of both parents and children to actively participate
in a digital world.
2.3
The quality of screen time
The pandemic also laid bare how much of the discourse around screen time was reductively
focused on “how much” as opposed to “what” and “why”. Discussions in both academia
and within families around how much screen time was healthy for children across various
age groups has been dominated by issues of quantity of media usage, with special attention
when introducing technology to younger infants or toddlers, as well as practical techniques
for healthy and sensible strategies for how to best manage screen time [4]. Several
researchers noted that as a result of the pandemic the different qualities of time
online have become very much more visible as digital tools have become vital for families
and children to connect to teachers and/or friends. Again, workshop participants felt
that they had a responsibility to take a role in these broader societal discussions
in terms of a painting a more nuanced picture of children’s experiences with digital
technologies that help parents and teachers make better judgements in creating appropriate
digital environments for their children. Within academia there is an opportunity to
nudge research agendas and debate away from a focus on quantity and management towards
a more holistic understanding of what constitutes quality screen time in the context
of different elements of childhood and digital literacy.
2.4
Participation in times of a pandemic
Lastly, several researchers reported on their efforts to re-think their participatory
design approaches in times of social isolation using innovative distributed and online
methods. Pivoting a face-to-face workshop with children requires “PD in a box” methods,
in some ways similar to Cultural Probes [5]. For example, being able to package up
design materials and resources and deliver them to children’s homes was required so
that children could participate in hands-on design or maker workshops at home. These
sessions must be facilitated with asynchronous and synchronous supports and several
researchers acknowledged that little was known about how to facilitate these sessions
remotely. This presents another fruitful area for research and exploration, and several
of the workshop organizers had already actively begun this work. There was also a
discussion about not only the qualities of participation that were lost in these remote
sessions, but what might be gained, such as including siblings in the workshop or
being connected to the whole household.
One of the possible benefits of this shift towards remote participation is the prospect
that sessions with children could now be more inclusive due to the fact that children
who do not have access to research labs and university campuses could now be involved.
But again, households that are hardest to reach, without internet connection or parental
support, for example, may be excluded – yet again raising issues around social justice
and equal access. Another possible benefit may be the change of group dynamics in
online workshops. One participant shared the experience that in one of their online
sessions, one of the children started using the private chat function with the facilitator,
which gave them a channel to express themselves in ways that may not be possible in
a physical setting that may be associated with more social peer pressure. This opens
up the space of exploring how to support novel interaction approaches during participatory
design workshops with children, extending our repertoire of tools.
On the other hand, much is lost by moving design and maker activities online, particularly
the shared, hands-on, social experience of designing and sharing together. Researchers
also reported that it was much harder to get a “feeling for the room” virtually and
that they had not yet found a substitute for the physical experience of quite literally
bringing ideas from a corner to the center of the collaboration.
These anecdotes point to the need for thorough research into the opportunities and
failures of communication technologies in these unique times. There was broad consensus
that we do not know nearly enough about how to structure, scaffold and facilitate
participatory design over distances. Thinking forward, we may also benefit from these
insights when designing novel technologies that may enrich offline interactions or
when developing hybrid participation formats that bring together the best of both
worlds.
3
Outlook
While Covid-19 itself will hopefully be tamed by a vaccine, the impacts on our society
are permanent. The pandemic has served as a magnifying glass that has laid bare new
and old divides, structural inequalities and revealed broken promises and destructive
mechanisms of our digital society. The knee-jerking switch to remote education has
presented us with a sobering reality check for the levels of impact and equity of
our work. But it has also revealed new opportunity spaces and a sharpened sense of
where research needs to fill gaps.
We hope that the pandemic will prompt the CCI community to intensify its efforts to
research meaningful, real world roles of technology in children’s lives and address
issues of children’s participation in its design. Perhaps mounting social unrest presents
us with an opportunity to critically reflect and expand our perspectives on the dimensions
of social justice in our work. It is a good time to ask, Whose futures are we designing
for and who is left out? Whose agendas and ideas are we able to consider when configuring
participation in our research and practice? And, How are our technologies re-configuring
power and creating new mechanisms of exclusion or inclusion? We think that these questions
need to shape our work beyond immediate responses to Covid-19 and social unrest, becoming
central concerns that may enable us to also meet yet more serious challenges, such
as the climate crisis, and the imperative to build more inclusive, fair and just societies.
In “building back better”, our research community has a role to play. As you are able,
we urge you to engage, discuss and work as a community to address these issues.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal
relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.