Someone or Something to Play With?: An Empirical Study on how Parents Evaluate the Social Appropriateness of Interactions Between Children and Differently Embodied Artificial Interaction Partners

Abstract

Children are raised with technologies that are able to respond to them in natural language. This not only makes it easy to communicate but also to connect with them socially. While communication abilities might have benefits (e.g., for learning), it might also raise concerns among parents as the technologies are not necessarily designed to facilitate the children's social, emotional, and cognitive developments and serve as a model for the construction of a social world among humans. First technologies children can talk to differ in their embodiment (e.g., robots and voice assistants), which could affect central variables, such as social presence, trust, and privacy concerns. The present study aimed to investigate how parents conceptualize socially appropriate interactions between children and technologies. The results underline the parents' emphasis on embodiment and privacy protection. The study underlines the importance of incorporating the parental perspective to meet the expectations of responsible interactions between children and technologies.