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The phenomena surrounding computers has, during the past 10-15 years, broadened to become a non-trivial component of young children’s lives. This broadening is happening at a time when many technologies include dark patterns that induce compulsive use, disregard privacy, and lead to passive, isolating experiences. As a counter to these developments, we build on the 3Cs approach to young children’s technologies (create, connect, and communicate), and propose a 4th C: control. We call for technologies that give children and caregivers control over their activities, time, data, and decision-making. In this paper, we provide a historical and child development perspective to motivate our approach, present its characteristics, illustrate it with examples, and discuss challenges and opportunities. 

In a post-lockdown context with significant concerns about children’s social skills, it is important for technologies to play a positive role in supporting children across cultures, settings, and backgrounds. The research presented in this work-in-progress is about StoryCarnival, a technology designed to promote creative, social role play among preschool children. We conducted StoryCarnival play sessions for three weeks with a group of 3-4-year-old children in Montevideo, Uruguay, a very different setting from the one where StoryCarnival was designed. We present preliminary results suggesting the activities resulted in a significant increase in children’s social play. We also discuss the impact of cultural differences and describe experiences with some features of StoryCarnival that had not previously been used in the field. 

As developmental barriers to children’s access to technology have lowered, dark patterns in apps geared toward children encourage privacy invasions and compulsive use of technology. With StoryCarnival, we use a web app with e-book and printable stories and an adult-operated voice agent to encourage the opposite: mindful and minimal use of technology to support developmentally significant aspects of children’s play. 

There is an opportunity to support shy and neurodivergent children in the development of critical executive function (EF) skills through social play. Through a within-subjects study at a preschool and a remote Zoom observation case study of neurodivergent children and their parents, I have identified the potential for StoryCarnival, a system that supports evidence-based sociodramatic play activities through e-book stories, a play-planning app, and a tangible, adult-controlled voice agent, to empower shy children to more confidently engage with their peers, to motivate neurodivergent children through various modalities, to encourage neurodivergent children to engage in symbolic play, and to afford children different types of agency in different settings. Through my future work, I hope to confirm the validity of these findings and examine the potential for StoryCarnival to support inclusive play in mixed-abilities groups through a large-scale deployment study and field studies.