Congratulations to the STIR Lab researchers and the collaborators on getting two full papers, one poster, and three demos accepted at CSCW 2022.
This full paper was authored by Mamtaj Akter, Amy Godfrey, Dr. Jess Kropczynski, Dr. Heather Lipford, Dr. Pamela Wisniewski
Abstract: Our research aims to highlight and alleviate the complex tensions around online safety, privacy, and smartphone usage in families so that parents and teens can work together to better manage mobile privacy and security-related risks. We developed a mobile application (“app”) for Community Oversight of Privacy and Security (“CO-oPS”) and had parents and teens assess whether it would be applicable for use with their families. CO-oPS is an Android app that allows a group of users to co-monitor the apps installed on one another’s devices and the privacy permissions granted to those apps. We conducted a study with 19 parent-teen (ages 13-17) pairs to understand how they currently managed mobile safety and app privacy within their family and then had them install, use, and evaluate the CO-oPS app. We found that both parents and teens gave little consideration to online safety and privacy before installing new apps or granting privacy permissions. When using CO-oPS, participants liked how the app increased transparency into one another’s devices in a way that facilitated communication, but were less inclined to use features for in-app messaging or to hide apps from one another. Key themes related to power imbalances between parents and teens surfaced that made co-management challenging. Parents were more open to collaborative oversight than teens, who felt that it was not their place to monitor their parents, even though both often believed parents lacked the technological expertise to monitor themselves. Our study sheds light on why collaborative practices for managing online safety and privacy within families may be beneficial but also quite difficult to implement in practice. We provide recommendations for overcoming these challenges based on the insights gained from our study.
This full paper was authored by Ashwaq Alsoubai, Jihye Song, Dr. Afsaneh Razi, Nurun Naher, Dr. Munmun De Choudhury, Dr. Pamela Wisniewski
Abstract: Sexual exploration is a natural part of adolescent development; yet, unmediated internet access has enabled teens to engage in a wider variety of potentially riskier sexual interactions than previous generations, from normatively appropriate sexual interactions to sexually abusive situations. Teens have turned to online peer support platforms to disclose and seek support about these experiences. Therefore, we analyzed posts (N = 45,955) made by adolescents (ages 13–17) on an online peer support platform to deeply examine their online sexual risk experiences. By applying a mixed methods approach, we 1) accurately (average of AUC = 0.90) identified posts that contained teen disclosures about online sexual risk experiences and classified the posts based on level of consent (i.e., consensual, non-consensual, sexual abuse) and relationship type (i.e., stranger, dating/friend, family) between the teen and the person in which they shared the sexual experience, 2) detected statistically significant differences in the proportions of posts based on these dimensions, and 3) further unpacked the nuance in how these online sexual risk experiences were typically characterized in the posts. Teens were significantly more likely to engage in consensual sexting with friends/dating partners; unwanted solicitations were more likely from strangers, and sexual abuse was more likely when a family member was involved. We contribute to the HCI and CSCW literature around youth online sexual risk experiences by moving beyond the false dichotomy of “safe” versus “risky”. Our work provides a deeper understanding of technology-mediated adolescent sexual behaviors from the perspectives of sexual well-being, risk detection, and the prevention of online sexual violence toward youth.
This poster was authored by Prema Dev, Jessica Medina, Zainab Agha, Dr. Munmun De Choudhury, Dr. Afsaneh Razi, Dr. Pamela J. Wisniewski
Abstract: Online sexual risks pose a serious and frequent threat to adolescents’ online safety. While significant work is done within the HCI community to understand teens’ sexual experiences through public posts, we extend their research by qualitatively analyzing 156 private Instagram conversations flagged by 58 adolescents to understand the characteristics of sexual risks faced with strangers, acquaintances, and friends. We found that youth are often victimized by strangers through sexual solicitation/harassment as well as sexual spamming via text and visual media, which is often ignored by them. In contrast, adolescents’ played mixed roles with acquaintances, as they were often victims of sexual harassment, but sometimes engaged in sexting, or interacted by rejecting sexual requests. Lastly, adolescents were never recipients of sexual risks with their friends, as they mostly mutually participated in sexting or sexual spamming. Based on these results, we provide our insights and recommendations for future researchers.
MOSafely, Is that Sus? A Youth-Centric Online Risk Assessment Dashboard
This demo was authored by Ashwaq Alsoubai, Xavier Caddle, Ryan Doherty, Alexandra Koehler, Estefania Sanchez, Munmun De Choudhury, Pamela Wisniewski
CO-oPS: A Mobile App for Community Oversight of Privacy and Security
This demo was authored by Mamtaj Akter, Leena Alghamdi, Dylan Gillespie, Dr. Nazmus Miazi, Dr. Jess Kropczynski, Dr. Heather Lipford, Dr. Pamela Wisniewski
This demo was authored by Leena Alghamdi, Mamtaj Akter, Cristobal Cardenas, Diego Cruces, Dr. Jason Wiese, Dr. Jess Kropczynski, Dr. Heather Lipford, Dr. Pamela Wisniewski