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1. Let's Talk about Sext: How Adolescents Seek Support and Advice about Their Online Sexual Experiences

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376400  

   Razi, Afsaneh ; Badillo-Urquiola, Karla ; Wisniewski, Pamela J. ( April 2020 , Let’s Talk about Sext: How Teens Seek Support and Advice for Online Sexual Interactions)

   We conducted a thematic content analysis of 4,180 posts by adolescents (ages 12-17) on an online peer support mental health forum to understand what and how adolescents talk about their online sexual interactions. Youth used the platform to seek support (83%), connect with others (15%), and give advice (5%) about sexting, their sexual orientation, sexual abuse, and explicit content. Females often received unwanted nudes from strangers and struggled with how to turn down sexting requests from people they knew. Meanwhile, others who sought support complained that they received unwanted sexual solicitations while doing so—to the point that adolescents gave advice to one another on which users to stay away from. Our research provides insight into the online sexual experiences of adolescents and how they seek support around these issues. We discuss how to design peer-based social media platforms to support the well-being and safety of youth. 

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2. Deploying Human-Centered Machine Learning to Improve Adolescent Online Sexual Risk Detection Algorithms

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3323994.3372138  

   Razi, Afsaneh ( January 2020 , Deploying Human-Centered Machine Learning to Improve Adolescent Online Sexual Risk Detection Algorithms)

   As adolescents' engagement increases online, it becomes more essential to provide a safe environment for them. Although some apps and systems are available for keeping teens safer online, these approaches and apps do not consider the needs of parents and teens. We would like to improve adolescent online sexual risk detection algorithms. In order to do so, I'll conduct three research studies for my dissertation: 1) Qualitative analysis on teens posts on an online peer support platform about online sexual risks in order to gain deep understanding of online sexual risks 2) Train a machine learning approach to detect sexual risks based on teens conversations with sex offenders 3) develop a machine learning algorithm for detecting online sexual risks specialized for adolescents. 

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3. Duty to Respond: The Challenges Social Service Providers Face When Charged with Keeping Youth Safe Online

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3567556  

   Caddle, Xavier V. ; Naher, Nurun ; Miller, Zachary P. ; Badillo-Urquiola, Karla ; Wisniewski, Pamela J. ( January 2023 , Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction)

   Social service providers play a vital role in the developmental outcomes of underprivileged youth as they transition into adulthood. Educators, mental health professionals, juvenile justice officers, and child welfare caseworkers often have first-hand knowledge of the trials uniquely faced by these vulnerable youth and are charged with mitigating harmful risks, such as mental health challenges, child abuse, drug use, and sex trafficking. Yet, less is known about whether or how social service providers assess and mitigate the online risk experiences of youth under their care. Therefore, as part of the National Science Foundation (NSF) I-Corps program, we conducted interviews with 37 social service providers (SSPs) who work with underprivileged youth to determine what (if any) online risks are most concerning to them given their role in youth protection, how they assess or become aware of these online risk experiences, and whether they see value in the possibility of using artificial intelligence (AI) as a potential solution for online risk detection. Overall, online sexual risks (e.g., sexual grooming and abuse) and cyberbullying were the most salient concern across all social service domains, especially when these experiences crossed the boundary between the digital and the physical worlds. Yet, SSPs had to rely heavily on youth self-reports to know whether and when online risks occurred, which required building a trusting relationship with youth; otherwise, SSPs became aware only after a formal investigation had been launched. Therefore, most SSPs found value in the potential for using AI as an early detection system and to monitor youth, but they were concerned that such a solution would not be feasible due to a lack of resources to adequately respond to online incidences, access to the necessary digital trace data (e.g., social media), context, and concerns about violating the trust relationships they built with youth. Thus, such automated risk detection systems should be designed and deployed with caution, as their implementation could cause youth to mistrust adults, thereby limiting the receipt of necessary guidance and support. We add to the bodies of research on adolescent online safety and the benefits and challenges of leveraging algorithmic systems in the public sector. 

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4. "Strike at the Root": Co-designing Real-Time Social Media Interventions for Adolescent Online Risk Prevention

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3579625  

   Agha, Zainab ; Badillo-Urquiola, Karla ; Wisniewski, Pamela J. ( April 2023 , Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction)

   Adolescent online safety researchers have emphasized the importance of moving beyond restrictive and privacy invasive approaches to online safety, towards resilience-based approaches for empowering teens to deal with online risks independently. Unfortunately, many of the existing online safety interventions are focused on parental mediation and not contextualized to teens' personal experiences online; thus, they do not effectively cater to the unique needs of teens. To better understand how we might design online safety interventions that help teens deal with online risks, as well as when and how to intervene, we must include teens as partners in the design process and equip them with the skills needed to contribute equally to the design process. As such, we conducted User Experience (UX) bootcamps with 21 teens (ages 13-17) to first teach them important UX design skills using industry standard tools, so they could create storyboards for unsafe online interactions commonly experienced by teens and high-fidelity, interactive prototypes for dealing with these situations. Based on their storyboards, teens often encountered information breaches and sexual risks with strangers, as well as cyberbullying from acquaintances or friends. While teens often blocked or reported strangers, they struggled with responding to risks from friends or acquaintances, seeking advice from others on the best action to take. Importantly, teens did not find any of the existing ways for responding to these risks to be effective in keeping them safe. When asked to create their own design-based interventions, teens frequently envisioned nudges that occurred in real-time. Interestingly, teens more often designed for risk prevention (rather than risk coping) by focusing on nudging the risk perpetrator (rather than the victim) to rethink their actions, block harmful actions from occurring, or penalizing perpetrators for inappropriate behavior to prevent it from happening again in the future. Teens also designed personalized sensitivity filters to provide teens the ability to manage content they wanted to see online. Some teens also designed personalized nudges, so that teens could receive intelligent, guided advice from the platform that would help them know how to handle online risks themselves without intervention from their parents. Our findings highlight how teens want to address online risks at the root by putting the onus of risk prevention on those who perpetrate them - rather than on the victim. Our work is the first to leverage co-design with teens to develop novel online safety interventions that advocate for a paradigm shift from youth risk protection to promoting good digital citizenship.

    

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5. Teens on Tech: Using an Asynchronous Remote Community to Explore Adolescents' Online Safety Perspectives

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3584931.3606967  

   Jean Baptiste, Naulsberry ; Park, Jinkyung ; Chatlani, Neeraj ; Ali, Naima Samreen ; Wisniewski, Pamela J. ( October 2023 , ACM)

   As part of a Youth Advisory Board of teens (YAB), a longitudinal and interactive program to engage with teens for adolescent online safety research, we used an Asynchronous Remote Community (ARC) method with seven teens to explore their social media usage and perspectives on privacy on social media. There was a spectrum of privacy levels in our teen participants’ preferred social media platforms and preferences varied depending on their user goals such as content viewing and socializing. They recognized privacy risks they could encounter on social media, hence, actively used privacy features afforded by platforms to stay safe while meeting their goals. In addition, our teen participants designed solutions that can aid users to exercise more granular control over determining what information on their accounts is to be shared with which groups of users. Our findings highlight the need to ensure researchers and social media developers work with teens to provide teen-centric solutions for safer experiences on social media. 

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