Abstract
Researchers and policymakers advocate teaching children about digital privacy, but privacy literacy has not been theorized for children. Drawing on interviews with 30 families, including 40 children, we analyze children’s perspectives on password management in three contexts—family life, friendship, and education—and develop a new approach to privacy literacy grounded in Nissenbaum’s contextual integrity framework. Contextual integrity equates privacy with appropriate flows of information, and we show how children’s perceptions of the appropriateness of disclosing a password varied across contexts. We explain why privacy literacy should focus on norms rather than rules and discuss how adults can use learning moments to strengthen children’s privacy literacy. We argue that equipping children to make privacy-related decisions serves them better than instructing them to follow privacy-related rules.
Highlights
Researchers and policymakers advocate integrating privacy into information literacy efforts to help children understand the privacy implications of digital activities (Culver & Grizzle, 2017; Stoilova, Nandagiri, & Livingstone, 2019)
We draw on literacy as a social practice (Scribner & Cole, 1981) and privacy as the appropriate flow of information (Nissenbaum, 2010, 2019) to articulate privacy literacy as the practice of enacting appropriate information flows within sociotechnical systems
We organize the findings by context and interpret children’s perspectives surrounding a specific information flow—the disclosure of passwords—through contextual integrity (CI), highlighting connections to privacy literacy
Summary
Researchers and policymakers advocate integrating privacy into information literacy efforts to help children understand the privacy implications of digital activities (Culver & Grizzle, 2017; Stoilova, Nandagiri, & Livingstone, 2019). By interpreting children’s perspectives on password management through the contextual integrity (CI) framework (Nissenbaum, 2010, 2019), we ground privacy literacy in a well-established privacy theory and connect it to children’s experiences of privacy. We interpret children’s perspectives on password management in three contexts—family life, friendship, and education—through the CI framework and explain why privacy literacy should attend to norms rather than rules. We discuss how adults can use learning moments to help strengthen children’s privacy literacy
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