Taking A More Balanced Approach To Adolescent Mobile Safety

Adolescent online safety is becoming more challenging as teens are prolifically using mobile smart phones. Parental control applications ( apps ) are available, but, the adoption rates of such apps are remarkably low and may not adequately address the problem at hand. To examine this further, we propose three studies 1) a structured analysis of existing adolescent online safety apps, 2) a survey-based study to confirm our hypotheses that the values embedded in the features of these existing apps are sub-optimal, and 3) building a prototype of a new online safety app with features that better meet the needs of parents and teens