0DISRUPTED CHILDHOOD – The Cost of Persuasive Design

Disrupted Childhood
The cost of persuasive design
Version 2, April 2023

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DISRUPTED CHILDHOOD – The Cost of Persuasive Design

About 5Rights Foundation
5Rights develops new policy, creates innovative frameworks, develops technicalstandards, publishes research, challenges received narratives and ensures thatchildren's rights and needs are recognised and prioritised in the digital world. While
5Rights works exclusively on behalf of and with children and young people under 18,
our solutions and strategies are relevant to many other communities.
Our focus is on implementable change and our work is cited and used widely aroundthe world. We work with governments, inter-governmental institutions, professional
associations, academics, businesses, and children, so that digital products and services
can impact positively on the lived experiences of young people.

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank all contributors, including the authors of the first version of thisreport, Schillings Law Firm, and the many academics upon whose work we have built:
the network of organisations and individuals who support the rights of children in thedigital environment and, most of all, the children and young people with whom we work.

April 2023

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DISRUPTED CHILDHOOD – The Cost of Persuasive Design

Contents
Foreword

3

Introduction

4

Definitions

6

Chapter One: Where childhood and technology meet

10

Chapter Two: The commercial imperative

15

Chapter Three: Persuasive design strategies

18

Chapter Four: The impact of persuasive design on childhood

31

Chapter Five: Seeds of change

42

Conclusion

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DISRUPTED CHILDHOOD – The Cost of Persuasive Design

Foreword
Much has happened in the five years since the initial publication of this report. In theUK, the Age Appropriate Design Code (AADC) was introduced, creating the first privacy
by design regime to better protect children. This saw huge changes to online services
that reduced their toxicity for children. The AADC was followed shortly by the Irish Data
Protection Commission’s Fundamentals for a Child-Oriented Approach to Data
Processing, the California Age Appropriate Design Code, with others in the US andaround the world set to follow. In Europe, the Digital Services Act was passed, promisingfurther restrictions on profiling and unsafe features, and as this report goes to press,
the long-awaited Online Safety Bill is inching its way through the UK Parliament.
Nothing in these legislative and regulatory advances has fundamentally changed theasymmetry of power between tech and the children that use it. And while it is gratifying
to see much of the language of our first report enter the mainstream policy discourse,
reluctantly, we must admit that wholesale change is yet to arrive.
While some progress has been made, the fact remains that children are still left tonavigate spaces designed to hold their attention for commercial benefit, even when thiscomes at the expense of their wellbeing. Frustratingly, companies push responsibility
onto parents and users, boasting of advanced parental controls and ‘user agency’, suchas usage statistics, screen time caps, ‘time out’ prompts and linked parent accounts.
This simply shifts accountability from corporates, who employ behavioural psychologists
for the specific purpose of maximising engagement, to an overwhelmed parent or evena child. We must recognise that for today’s children, the online and offline worlds haveall but merged, and while we must equip them to negotiate both, with equal knowledge,
preparation, confidence and skill, there is no doubt that the bulk of responsibility for
product design and driving positive outcomes should remain with the companies
themselves.
As we reach a tipping point in the regulation of digital technologies, it is critical thatpolicymakers and regulators focus their attention on the use of persuasive design andthe business models it serves, and put the safe and equitable design of products anddigital systems at the heart of their work.
This was a much-admired report when it was first published and still offers aclearsighted view of what lies behind children’s experiences online. My thanks to all
authors past and present, and to Izzy Wick, 5Rights’ Policy Director, for updating the
text.

Baroness Beeban Kidron

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DISRUPTED CHILDHOOD – The Cost of Persuasive Design

Introduction
Significant technological advances are very often accompanied by concerned debate.
Will our daily lives be improved or disrupted? Will the need for human intervention orinteraction be reduced? Will our relationships change? Digital technologies, unlike
previous inventions, not only enhance real world existence, but offer parallel
alternatives. Infinitely portable and powerfully designed alternative and augmented
realities are on offer 24/7. The ready availability of digital services and the commercial
incentives to maximise ‘engagement’ fuelled a gold-rush for children’s attention. As wemove towards web 3.0 and spend more time in virtual environments like the metaverse,risks to children will also evolve, and the nature of their interactions will become less‘screen-based’ and more dynamic and interconnected.
As children’s online and offline lives are increasingly blended, it is no longer helpful orfeasible to distinguish between the two. What we must now urgently consider is thenature of children’s experiences in this dynamic and interconnected world, and how thedesign of digital products and services affects their behaviours and development.
This report examines the persuasive design features and strategies common to many
popular digital products and services used by children. It considers the impact of
persuasive design on children’s social, mental and physical development, and how thedigital world can be redesigned to ensure children’s rights are recognised, respected
and upheld.

“The system is failing… social networks — they are manmade. If they are not serving humanity, they can andshould be changed.”
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Inventor of the World Wide Web

The most commonly used persuasive design strategies are those deployed in service tothe ‘attention economy’ - a system where revenue is generated by monetistingengagement. Variously called ‘dark patterns’, ‘reward loops’, ‘captology’, ‘sticky’, ‘dwellfeatures’ and ‘extended use strategies’, persuasive design is deliberately baked into
digital services and products to capture and hold users’ attention and create habitual
behaviours.
The costs to children, who in the report call for fairer treatment, are palpable. They
include personal anxiety, social aggression, denuded relationships, sleep deprivationand negative impacts on education, health and wellbeing. At the same time, the modus
operandi of the tech sector – excessive data surveillance made possible by persuasive
design - raises ethical, moral and legal questions.
Industry insiders, unhappy with compulsive strategies, demand that the technology
sector operate within a fully described set of ethical and social standards. Their
powerful words reflect a broader discontent throughout civil society. Seeds of change
are seen in the increasing focus of policy makers, the media and concerned adults on
the costs to children of persuasive and habit-forming design.
Digital technology promises unlimited potential for children and society. To fulfil its
promise, it must be deployed in a way that is accountable and proactively meets the

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DISRUPTED CHILDHOOD – The Cost of Persuasive Designneeds of its child users. Services and products should be required to anticipate thevulnerabilities associated with the different ages and developmental stages ofchildhood to fully realise their potential.
Whilst acknowledging the recent steps taken by some technology companies to better
serve younger users, it remains the case that digital services have consistently failed toprioritise the needs of children over those of shareholders.
Since this report’s initial publication in 2018, lawmakers and regulators around theworld have begun to address the risks created by the design of digital platforms popularamong children and young people. We have also seen laudable action from industry
bodies like the IEEE Standards Association to establish ‘what good looks like’ for ageappropriate design, with the publication of standard 2089 in 2021.1
Finally, with the adoption of General Comment 25 on children’s rights in relation to thedigital environment by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2021,2 it is now
unequivocal that children’s rights apply equally online and offline.
If we continue to allow persuasive design features to determine the decisions children
make online, we are in danger of stunting the creativity and development of ageneration. This has far-reaching consequences for individual children, families andsociety. We urgently need to consider whether children are autonomous, respected andprotected online.

Standards Committee of the IEEE Consumer Technology Society, IEEE Standard for an Age Appropriate Digital Services
based on the 5Rights Principles, IEEE Consumer Technology Society (2021)
2 UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 25 on children’s rights in relation to the digital
environment (2021)
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Definitions
Persuasive design, a term coined by psychologist BJ Fogg, combines the theoryof behavioural design with computer technology.3 Behavioural design uses a system of
rewards and punishments to influence human behaviour patterns. Both persuasive andbehavioural designs can be used to increase wellbeing for personal and social good.
However, it is arguably more often used to manipulate human behaviour so that people
subconsciously act in the commercial interests of others.

A brief history of behavioural design
At the beginning of the 20th Century, Russian physiologist Professor Ivan Pavlov
discovered how to get dogs to produce an instinctive salivating response to a
stimulus that bore no relationship to food. Having observed that dogs naturally
salivate in anticipation of food, Pavlov experimented by ringing a bell whenever hefed the dogs. He then stopped bringing food and only rang the bell. The dogs,‘conditioned’ to associate the ringing with food, continued to salivate at the sound of
the bell. This is known as classical conditioning.
In the 1940s, psychologists BF Skinner and Charles Ferster built on Pavlov’s work
introducing ‘schedules of reinforcement’ whilst experimenting with pigeons. They
found they could teach the pigeons that their behaviour had consequences. This
form of reinforcement, ‘operant conditioning’, requires the deployment of both
reward and punishments to be effective.
Classical and operant conditioning are acknowledged as having strengths andweaknesses, but others have gone on to build on the key insight that humanand animal behaviour can be conditioned (trained) to change.
In the 1990s, neuroscientist Wolfram Schultz demonstrated that once the brain
receives a cue or trigger to behave in a way that is rewarded, it will automaticallyseek out further rewards. His findings implied that the human brain could be trained
to repeat ‘reward seeking’ actions. Schultz concluded that the use of reward signals
was so powerful that they constrained ‘free will’ to act.
In the late 1990s, Professor BJ Fogg set up the Persuasive Design Lab and soonafter, published ‘Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Thinkand Do.’4 By 2009, he had developed The Fogg Behavior Model, combining
advances in technology with behavioural science. The Behavior Model enabled
computer scientists to build software that rewards or punishes certain behaviours inorder to elicit desired changes in behaviour.5
Whilst Fogg’s Persuasive Design Lab was set up with the intention of combining
technology and behavioural science for social good (for example by developing
programmes that use persuasive design to help people stop smoking or resolve
conflict), the Lab became a ‘hothouse’ for Silicon Valley. Alumni include Mike

BJ Fogg, ‘Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do’, Ubiquity (2002)
Ibid.
5 BJ Fogg, ‘A Behavior Model for Persuasive Design’, Persuasive Technology Lab, Stanford University (2009)
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Krieger, co-founder of Instagram; Tristan Harris, ex-design ethicist at Google; and Ed
Baker, head of growth at both Facebook and Uber, among others.6
Fogg’s is not the only theory of behavioural design; another notable example isProfessors Richard H Thaler and Cass R Sunstein’s ‘Nudge Theory’. Their model
uses ‘choice architecture’ to ask questions in a way that nudges individuals’
behaviour ‘in beneficial directions without restricting freedom of choice’. 7 The
Nudge Theory found favour with Britain’s former Prime Minister David Cameron who
set up The Behavioural Insights Team within the Cabinet Office in July 2010 to‘enable people to make better choices for themselves’.
Separately and together, these theories build on the proven concept that humanbehaviour can be manipulated by priming and conditioning, i.e. by manipulating
human instincts using rewards and punishments.

Persuasive design strategies are generally deployed online in service to a businessmodel premised on ‘engagement’. These strategies are designed to encourage users togive up more of their time and attention to maximise engagement. More engagement
equals more data, more advertising opportunities and in turn, more revenue. In thisway, persuasive design is a valuable tool for companies to meet their commercial
objectives, often to the detriment of consumers.

“Never before in history have such a small number ofdesigners… had such a large influence on two billion[now three billion] people’s thoughts and choices.”
Tristan Harris, ex-Google Ethicist, founder of the Centre for Humane Technology

In this report, we refer to persuasive design, which is known variously as behaviouraldesign and ‘nudging’. We also refer to dark patterns, habit-forming and addictive
design. It is important to note that persuasive and behavioural design and nudge
techniques are not ‘bad’ in and of themselves. They can be used to encourage positive
behaviour or give helpful reminders or warnings at opportune moments. Dark patterns
are negative by definition, referring to design choices that are not always visible to andrarely in the best interests of the user. Below we define some of common terms used inrelation to the collective practice known as persuasive design.
Dark patterns
The term “dark patterns” was coined in 2010 by the user experience (UX) designer,
Harry Brignull, to describe “tricks used in websites and apps that make you do things
that you didn't mean to, like buying or signing up for something”.8 Dark patterns are
ubiquitous online, partly as a result of the use of A/B testing in product development,
which shows them to be profit-maximising.
There is no universally accepted definition of dark patterns, but broadly it refers todesign practices commonly found in online user interfaces that lead consumers to

WIRED, ‘The formula for phone addiction might double as a cure’ (1 February 2018)
R Thaler & C Sunstein, ‘Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness’, Yale University Press (2008)
8 Harry Brignull, Deceptive Design (2010)
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make choices that often are not in their best interests, but generally serve thecommercial interests of the provider.
The OECD Committee on Consumer Policy have a working definition:“Dark commercial patterns are business practices employing elements of digitalchoice architecture, in particular in online user interfaces, that subvert or impair
consumer autonomy, decision-making or choice. They often deceive, coerce ormanipulate consumers and are likely to cause direct or indirect consumer detrimentin various ways, though it may be difficult or impossible to measure such detrimentin many instances.”9

The California Privacy Rights Act10, passed in 2020, is understood to be the firstlegislation to provide a definition of dark patterns, as follows: “a user interface designed
or manipulated with the substantial effect of subverting or impairing user autonomy,
decision-making, or choice.” The EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) defines dark patterns
as “practices that materially distort or impair, either purposefully or in effect, the abilityof recipients of the service to make autonomous and informed choices or decisions.”
The DSA expressly prohibits online services from using dark patterns or presenting
choices in a non-neutral manner, or subverting the autonomy, decision-making, or freechoice of users.11 The European Data Protection Board has also published guidance on
deceptive design patterns in social media platform interfaces, providing
recommendations for social media controllers on how to recognise and avoid thesepatterns.12
Nudge techniques
Nudge techniques borrow from the concept in behavioural economics that the design of‘decision environments’, also known as ‘choice architecture’, influences individual andcollective decision-making. Without depriving the decision makers of choice, it
influences the choices they make. This theory was popularised by two American
scholars at the University of Chicago, behavioural economist Richard Thaler and legal
scholar Cass Sunstein, who in 2008 published the book Nudge: Improving Health,
Wealth and Happiness. They define a nudge as "any aspect of the choice architecturethat alters people's behaviour predictably without forbidding any options or significantly
changing their economic incentives."13
The UK’s Age Appropriate Design Code refers to nudge techniques in its standards forchildren’s data protection. It defines these techniques as “design features which lead or
encourage users to follow the designer’s preferred paths in the user’s decision
making.”14 Services likely to be accessed by children are prohibited from using nudge

OECD, Dark commercial patterns, OECD Digital Economy Papers, No. 336, OECD Publishing (2022)
The California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), also known as Proposition 24, is a ballot measure that was approved by
California voters in 2020, amending the California Consumer Privacy Act
11 Recital 67, Digital Service Act (2022): “Providers of online platforms should therefore be prohibited from deceiving or
nudging recipients of the service and from distorting or impairing the autonomy, decision-making, or choice of therecipients of the service via the structure, design or functionalities of an online interface or a part thereof.”
12 European Data Protection Board, Guidelines 3/2022 on Dark patterns in social media platform interfaces: How torecognise and avoid them (2022)
13 R Thaler & C Sunstein, ‘Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness’, Yale University Press(2008)
14 Information Commissioner’s Office, Age Appropriate Design: a code of practice for online services (standard 13: nudge
techniques), (2020)
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techniques to lead children to make poor privacy decisions under the AADC. They arealso encouraged to use pro-privacy nudges and nudges designed to promote health andwellbeing. The AADC was the first statutory code to refer to the use of nudges, bringing
persuasive design firmly into the purview of privacy regulators.

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DISRUPTED CHILDHOOD – The Cost of Persuasive Design

Chapter One
Where childhood and technology meet
The opportunities that the digital world offers young people are undeniable. Digitaltechnologies have transformed the ways in which children play, socialise, learn andinteract with the environment around them. The tenor of the debate about theopportunities and risks to children online has evolved over the last few years, fromconcern over the amount of time children spend in front of screens to a far greater fear
about what their screens are actually showing and how they might be nudging and ororchestrating children’s expectations and behaviour. Evidence suggests thatthe negative effects of screen-based activities on children depend as much on
the quality of the activities as the quantity.15 In this chapter we move beyond screen
time to examine how children engage with the digital environment and the impact ofthese interactions on their lives.

“I think that services should assume that young people
are going to be on it because young people are all overthe internet: the internet is our oyster.”
Aged 16

ChildrenChildren are inherently optimistic about the opportunities that the digital environment
offers and believe that it adds significant value to their lives. In the UK:
•
•
•
•
•
•

Nearly all children aged 3-17 went online in 2022 (97%)
93% of 5-7-year-olds watch videos online
63% of 8-11-year-olds use social media
32% of 8-11-year-olds have profiles on TikTok and 24% on Snapchat
Nearly half of 12-15-year-olds post their own video content online
Three-quarters of 12-15-year-olds play video games online.16

There are, however, multiple indications that their digital engagement can have anegative impact on their wellbeing.

“When you’re not on your phone or social media you feel
as if you don’t know what’s happening. Also, because ofsocial media, people now struggle to function in asocial area when you can’t use your phone.”
Aged 16

Common Sense, Tweens, Teens, Tech, and Mental Health: Coming of Age in an Increasingly Digital, Uncertain, andUnequal World (July 2020)
16 Ofcom, Children and parents: media use and attitudes report 2023 (March 2023)
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Often children display absolute devotion to their devices, on the one hand saying they
‘could not do without their mobile phone for a day’, 17 that they are ‘best friends’ with
their phone18 or don’t feel ‘right without it’.19 At the same time, they report being‘addicted’, ‘attached’, ‘distracted’, ‘obliged’, ‘always consuming’, having ‘no control’ andfeeling ‘panicked’. Common Sense Media found that use of screen media among 8–18year-olds in the US has increased by 17% since the start of the pandemic (March
2020).20 4-in-10 young people aged 13-25 surveyed in the UK in 2021 said they rarely
disconnect from social media and that they use it constantly throughout the day.21“Even though social media can be great, it can be like acontagious disease where people can’t stop looking attheir phones and spreads the word of ‘oh you need tolook at this’.”Aged 12

The tension between being governed by and devoted to their device is, in part, a resultof the persuasive strategies baked into the digital services that children use.
Parents and carers
Parents are often told that their children are ‘digital natives’ which implies that children
are in control. In reality, research consistently shows young people do not climb far up
the digital ‘ladder of opportunities’,22 but instead spend most of their time on a handfulof platforms, predominantly social media-based, which offer a much more homogenisedand commercially driven environment.

“Tech companies don’t seem to think about how hard
they are making parents’ lives.”
Parent of a five and nine-year-old

Meanwhile, headlines scream about bullying, intimate image photo sharing anddangerous social media challenges among children, to which the response is often toteach them to be resilient. This suggests that children can make effective decisions
regarding their own safety and wellbeing in an environment over which they have little
control, and which has not been designed to meet their needs or serve their bestinterests.
These mixed messages — that children are simultaneously in charge, that they areunsafe, that they must have digital skills, and that products and services dictate theterms of their use — leave many parents confused. These mixed messages do notaccount for the full range of opportunities on offer or the difficulties that the digital
environment presents for children, among them the impact of persuasive design.

Common Sense, ‘Technology Addiction: Concern, Controversy and Finding a Balance’ (May 2016)
Financial Times, ‘The secret lives of children and their phones’ (6 October 2017)19 Ibid.
20 Common Sense, Common Sense Census: Media Use by Tweens and Teens 2021, (2022)
21 Ditch the Label, The Wireless Report 2021
22 Professor Sonia Livingstone et al ‘Children’s Online Risks and Opportunities: Comparative Findings From EU Kids
Online’ and ‘Net Children Go Mobile’, London School of Economics and Political Science (2014)
17
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DISRUPTED CHILDHOOD – The Cost of Persuasive Design“I worry… that he seems to be overwhelmed with somany messages and constant communication from his
friends. The alerts go off constantly. I couldn’t cope as
an adult, it’s overwhelming for children.”
Parent of a 12-year-old

75% of UK parents feel concerned about their child seeing age-inappropriate content
online, and 50% feel concerned about the pressure on them to spend money online.23
Many social media sites and games have introduced controls that give parents andcarers the ability to see how much time their children spend on the service and to set
time limits. As critics have noted, limiting the amount of time a child spends using ascreen or engaging with a particular service does not address the risks created by theway the service is designed or how it engages with the child; it merely limits their
exposure. Importantly, most parental tools do not give parents or guardians the ability
to alter the quality of their children’s experience, for example, limiting how muchadvertising they are exposed to, adapting the design features that feed social
comparison, or influencing the type of content they are shown. For some, the illusion of
being in control is more dangerous than the knowledge they are not.

“We set boundaries and when he’s at home we canenforce them — not easily but eventually. When he’sout of our sight it’s a whole other issue and I resent
having to ‘police’ him all the time. That isn’t the sort oftrusting parent I want to be.”Parent of a 12-year-old

Parental controls also require a degree of adult involvement and for those adults tohave a level of ‘digital literacy.’ In the UK, nine in ten parents feel they high awarenessof safety-promoting technical tools and controls, but only seven in ten had used any ofthem. More worryingly, just a third of parents are aware of the correct minimum age
requirement for social media use, which for most online services is 13, but in somecases may be 14, 16 or 18.24
Not all children have active or engaged parents, and many adults do not feel they havethe requisite knowledge to use tools designed to support their children online. There isalso a concern that such tools will introduce a level of parental surveillance that may beinappropriate for older children, or cause tension within families. And of course, somechildren do not have parents at all.

“Sometimes [there are arguments] between myhusband and me, sometimes between us and thechildren. It’s usually because someone is on a device
when someone else wants to talk to them or it’s dinner

23
24

Ofcom, Children and parents: media use and attitudes report 2023 (March 2023)
Ofcom, Children and parents: media use and attitudes report 2022 (March 2022)

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time or some other family situation where the tech isgetting in the way.”
Parent of an 11 and 16-year-old

Teachers
There has been a huge increase in the use of educational technology (EdTech) in
schools over recent years, in part due to the reliance on technology for remote learning
during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of the most commonly used EdTech products arecommercially provided, highly data extractive and use the same persuasive design
strategies found on social media, such as gamification and personalisation.
Natalia Kucirkova describes this as the “commercially driven design logic of
personalised EdTech”25 where the same methods used to maximise data capture,
recommend content and personalise experiences on social media are applied in digitallearning products. The logic follows that a user will be interested in content that issimilar or closely related to content they have previously engaged with. “Like-like”
design principles are incompatible with the prevailing pedagogy that learning is mosteffective when it is effortful, collaborative and involves serendipitous discoveries orlearning through surprise.

“Students’ achievement is reduced to narrowly defined objectives where rewards
are given for small task completion to extrinsically motivate students to continue
with the task... Each click or tap triggers a response that pushes the child towards adesired goal – as if there was only one right answer for each question…”- Natalia Kucirkova, 2022

“Show My Homework sometimes causes a distraction
because I start doing my homework and then get amessage or a notification and then have to check onthat and I get carried away.” 26
Aged 16ClassDojoClassDojo is a US-based app offered for free to teachers worldwide to track andnudge children’s behaviour in the classroom. Children are awarded positive
behavioural points for behaviours considered by the teacher to be positive andpoints are deducted for behaviours they consider to be negative.27

Natalia Kucirkova, The promise and pitfalls of personalised learning with new EdTech, published in Education Data
Futures: Critical, Regulatory and Practical Reflections, Digital Futures Commission, 5Rights Foundation (2022)
26 S. Livingstone and K. Pothong, (Eds), ‘Education Data Futures: Critical, Regulatory and Practical Reflections’, Digital
Futures Commission, 5Rights Foundation (2022)
27 L Hooper, S. Livingstone and K. Pothong, ‘Problems with data governance in UK schools: the cases of Google
Classroom and ClassDojo’, Digital Futures Commission, 5Rights Foundation (2022)
25

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DISRUPTED CHILDHOOD – The Cost of Persuasive Design“You are rewarded Dojo points if you do excellent homework or complete tasks to acertain level. I don’t think it helps learning because kids just want the points.
However they don’t retain the information.” – Aged 13

What children, parents and teachers are experiencing is often not the result ofintentional use, but the consequence of deliberate design strategies that train device
users to remain engaged, at any cost, even in a learning environment. While the aim isfor technology to benefit children and families in all settings, in many households andlearning environments it becomes a source of tension and confusion.

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Chapter Two
The commercial imperative
Many aspects of the digital environment that were conceived as free and open are
increasingly privately-owned and tightly controlled. Services that look free are
predicated on a service contract paid for with the currency of personal data. The valueof this data and the lengths to which the digital environment is designed to gather it areopaque to most users, and nearly all children.

“When an online service is free, you're not the customer.
You're the product.”
Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads

The zero-sum game for our attention
Tech companies, particularly those that provide services free of charge at the point ofuse, deal in the currency of personal data that is sold to advertisers for profit.
Information that a company can extract or infer is valuable to advertisers who then usethat data to target groups and individuals with products. The more time we spend on aservice, the more data is generated about our interests, habits, behaviours, even those
we may not be aware of. It follows that services are designed primarily to maximise theamount of time we spend on a service and the amount of data that can be generated
through our ‘engagement’.

“The thought process that went into building theseapplications, Facebook being the first of them… was allabout: ‘How do we consume as much of your time andconscious attention as possible?’ God only knows what
it’s doing to our children’s brains.”
Sean Parker, former Facebook president

Design strategies on social media are shaped by three broad commercial goals: toincrease the number of users, to maximise the amount of time users spend on theservice, and to increase the amount of content generation and interaction with theservice. As designers themselves acknowledge, “reducing attention will reducerevenue.”28 These business objectives shape design strategies, and in turn, outcomesfor children:

28

5Rights Foundation, Pathways: How digital design puts children at risk (July 2021)

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Business objectives

Design strategies

Outcomes for children

Companies want tomaximise timespent on theirservice

Services are designed toengage users, makecontent more and more
appealing and reduce
any friction in
consumption

Children feel like they
spend too much time
online and find it hard
to stop

Companies want tomaximise reach of
their service

Serivces are designed topromote and extend
networks andconnections, between
peers and strangers,
children and adults

Children haveextensive networks
and connections
online - to be offlineis to feel excluded

Companies want tomaximiseinteraction on theirservice

Services are designed toencourage content
creation and integrate
metrics for popularityand validations topromote interactivity

Children feel underpressure to getvalidation online andchange their
behaviour to gain it

Research by Cambridge University’s Psychometrics Centre in collaboration with
Microsoft Research Centre, found that with nothing more than the ‘Like’ button, a user’s
sexuality (88% and 75% accuracy for men and women respectively), drug use (65%
accuracy), parental relationship status (60% accuracy), ethnicity (95% accuracy) andpolitical views (85% accuracy) could be deduced.29 Similarly, a 2021 investigation by
the Wall Street Journal into TikTok’s algorithms found that in just 36 minutes of watch
time, the app can form a deep understanding of a user’s interests, based only on
signals like pausing, rewatching or lingering on a video. Some of the accounts thejournalists set up ended up lost in rabbit holes of similar content, including one thatwas fed a stream of videos about depression. Others were served videos thatencouraged eating disorders, sexualised minors and discussed suicide. 30“I remember joining TikTok and literally after a few days, it
had predicted more about me than I had taken time tofigure myself out in 18 years. It was just scarily able toknow everything about me.”Aged 18

Concerns have also grown about the use of centrally held personal data being mismanaged by public bodies. In November 2022, the UK data regulator reprimanded theDepartment for Education (DfE) after a major GDPR infraction which resulted in the
personal data of 28 million children being used by gambling companies. The
investigation found that DfE failed to protect children’s data from unauthorised
processing by third parties (for reasons other than the provision of educational
services), with data subjects “unaware of the processing” and unable “to object orotherwise withdraw from this processing.”31

M Kosiniski, D Stillwell, T Graepel. ‘Private Traits and Attributes are Predictable from Digital Records of
Human Behavior’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (April 2013)30 Wall Street Journal, Inside TikTok’s Algorithm: A WSJ Video Investigation (July 2021)
31 Information Commissioner’s Office, Department for Education reprimand (November 2022)
29

17

DISRUPTED CHILDHOOD – The Cost of Persuasive Design

The current generation of children are the first to have data collected about them at
every stage of their life, even before birth. Veronica Barassi in ‘Child Data Citizen’(2020) examines how children’s data is mined and commodified before they are born,
and throughout childhood, from pregnancy apps and social media posts, education andlearning apps, smart home devices, and medical records.32 The impact of ‘sharenting’ when parents and caregivers share information about their children online, usually
through photos and videos on social media - has become more acute as data profilingand inference models have grown more sophisticated. According to Harvard Law
Professor Leah Plunkett, adults ‘sharent’ because the digital world “makes it very easy
to do and even encourages it.”33
This runs counter to social norms offline where barriers to sharing are much greater andsharing is normally between two interested parties, with no intermediary who profiles achild (or parent) for commercial gain. Central to this value chain are persuasive design
strategies that entice and keep the user online to create more data.

“It makes me angry that businesses use specific designs
to keep young people on their app/website. They are
exploiting unknowing, young people so that they canbuild up ad revenue.”
Aged 17

In 2018, former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris launched the Centre for
Humane Technology, which describes the challenge of persuasive design in thefollowing terms:“There’s an invisible problem that’s affecting all of society… Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram, Google have produced amazing products that have benefited the worldenormously. But these companies are also caught in a zero-sum race for our finite
attention, which they need to make money. Constantly forced to outperform theircompetitors, they must use increasingly persuasive techniques to keep us glued.
They point AI-driven news feeds, content and notifications at our minds, continuallylearning how to hook us more deeply - from our own behaviour. Unfortunately,what’s best for capturing our attention isn’t best for our wellbeing: Snapchat turns
conversations into streaks, redefining how our children measure friendship.
Instagram glorifies the picture-perfect life, eroding our self-worth. Facebook
segregates us into echo chambers, fragmenting our communities. YouTube
autoplays the next perfect video, even if it eats into our sleep. These are not neutral
products. They are part of a system designed to addict us.”

It is not reasonable to design services to be compulsive and then reprimand children forbeing preoccupied with their phone. The commercial imperative of Big Tech to design
compulsive use into digital products and services conflicts with the needs and rights ofchildren. In considering how to fulfil those needs and rights, we must first understandpersuasive design strategies.

32
33

Veronica Barassi, Child Data Citizen: How Tech Companies Are Profiling Us from before Birth, MIT Press (2020)
Leah A. Plunkett, Sharenthood: Why we should think before we talk about our kids online, MIT press (2020)

DISRUPTED CHILDHOOD – The Cost of Persuasive Design

18

Chapter Three
Persuasive design strategies
Persuasive design strategies may be used singly or in combination, but they all follow
Professor Fogg’s understanding that human instincts can be accelerated, nudged anddetermined by technology that, in turn, changes or trains human behaviour. There aresome persuasive design strategies to which children are more susceptible than adults.
This is because children have less developed executive functioning skills, which arerequired to anticipate likely outcomes and self-regulate behaviours and emotions.
In this chapter we examine some of the most used persuasive design strategies andconsider in detail those that have the greatest impact on children. The below tableborrows from the taxonomy of dark patterns published by the OECD in 2022,34 as well
as 5Rights’ own research, to describe some of the most common examples of
persuasive design in products and services popular among children.

Type

Name
Notifications

Dopaminehits andanticipation

Randomrewards
Anticipation
mechanisms
Affirmations
Popularity
metrics
Activity
messages

Social proof /Fear ofmissing out

Reciprocity
Para-social
relationships
Ephemeralcontent

Forced action

34

Forcedregistration

Description
Alerting users to a change,
typically a new message,
update, social media post etc.
Providing ‘rewards’ that are
unknown and undetermined by
the userFeatures that generate a senseof anticipation before
gratification
Features that indicate approvalor provide validation
Numbers associated with auser’s engagement, usuallydisplayed visibly on a profile or
post
Indications about other users’
actions that generate FoMO or
anticipation
Sense of obligation toreciprocate or mirror otheruser’s actions
Nonreciprocal socio-emotional
connections with ‘high-profile’users such as celebrities ofinfluencers
Content that expires or‘disappears’ after a certain
length of time. Ephemeral
content cannot be recovered byusers
Forcing users to register ortricking them into thinking
registration is necessary

ExampleBuzzes, pings, vibrations,pulses, the colour red
Loot boxes
Typing bubbles to indicatethat another user is actively
typing a message
Likes, hearts, claps‘Likes’, friends, followers,
shares, claps, scoresInstagram pulses
Read receipts
Likes
Virtual Gifts
Snapchat Streaks
Influencers
OnlyFans Creators‘YouTubers’Instagram stories
BeReal
TikTok Now
Polls‘Login in to view posts fromthis account’‘Don’t have an account?

OECD, "Dark commercial patterns" , OECD Digital Economy Papers, No. 336, OECD Publishing (2022)

DISRUPTED CHILDHOOD – The Cost of Persuasive Design19

Sign up!’

Forceddisclosure
Friend spam /address bookleaching
Gamification

Logging in
Hiddeninformation

False hierarchyPre-selection

Tricking or forcing users into
sharing personal information‘Don’t miss out on special
rewards just for you!’

Manipulative extraction of
information about other users‘Allow access to you
contacts’

Encouraging users to ‘earn’access to certain functionalities
or credits through game-play orrepeated use
Encouraging users to log in via
an account e.g. Google or
Facebook
Obscuring important informationthat could prevent meaningfulconsent from being obtained

Visual prominence given to acertain setting or version of a
product that favours theprovider’s aims
Pre-selecting options or settings
that may not be in the bestinterests of the child

Interfaceinterference
Trick questions

Disguised ads

Obstruction

36

Hiding or concealing the natureof an advertisement or failing to
make it clear that something isa paid promotion

Confirmshaming /Toying with
EmotionEmotionally manipulative
framing to make users select acertain option

Hard to cancel
or opt out /click
fatigue

When it is easier for the user tosign up or opt-in anddisproportionately difficult tocancel or opt-out
Preventing users from saving
progress until they reach apredetermined point, orcomplete a certain action
Barriers that force a user toengage with something before
they can access information
they are seeking. Each barrier is

No save
Slowing
progress

35

Intentional or obvious ambiguity(e.g. double negatives or‘inverted’ tick boxes)‘Spin the wheel to see ifyou’ve won a prize!’‘Log in with
Facebook/Google/Twitter/
TikTok’For example, displaying
terms and conditions aslarge blocks of text in verysmall font, making it
difficult to read.
In a review of 240 popular
apps (including children’sapps) on the Google PlayStore, 61% were found toinclude false hierarchy dark
patterns.35
81 of 240 apps popular on
the Google Play store
contained more than two
pre-selections to set
notifications (push, email,SMS) ‘on’ by default
Tick box selection: “Please
do not send me marketing
emails/share myinformation with third
parties
In a review of 135 popularchildren’s apps, 95%
contained at least one typeof advertising, many ofwhich were specificallydesigned to look part of theapp.36For example, “Keep thisapp free and improve thead experience by allowing
tracking."
Highlighting the ‘opt-in’ or‘yes’ options in a brighter
colour, and obscuring the
opt-out options
Providing no option to save
Adverts you can’t skip or
close, videos that break up
news article.

OECD, "Dark commercial patterns" , OECD Digital Economy Papers, No. 336, OECD Publishing (2022)
Ibid.

DISRUPTED CHILDHOOD – The Cost of Persuasive Design

20

small, but as the user swipes,
removes and negotiates thebarriers, their time online isextended before getting to what
they initially sought.37

Seamlessness

Immortalaccounts

When it is difficult or impossible
to delete an account or related
data

Intermediate
currency

Purchases in virtual or ‘in-game’
currency that obscure real-world
cost

Cross-platform
sharingFunctions that encourage users
to share content on otherplatforms

Autoplay

Infinite scroll
Seamlesspayments

Content automatically playing
without initiation by the user, or‘pre-loaded’ to begin when theprevious piece of content has
played, minimising or
eliminating breaks during which
a user might decide todisengage.
Content feeds that load
automatically without any end
point and without requiring
actions from the user to reload
Design that removes steps or
barriers to payments

Not providing users with theoption to delete theiraccounts permanently(Facebook) or retrieve theirpersonal data
Robux (virtual currency in
Roblox). Roblox users
cannot wirthdraw money
without a Roblox premium
subscriptions ($5 USD per
month) and they have to beage 13 of overSeamless share to Twitter
when posting an OnlyFans
update.
Link stickers on Instagram
stories allowing users
allows to link directly to a
web page.

TikTok autoplays videos
when a user scrolls

Social media feeds(newsfeeds, ‘For You’pages)‘One click’ or hidden
payments

Most of these dark patterns will be familiar to adults, such are their prevalence in ecommerce sites, social media and other commonly used services. More surprising istheir prevalence in products and services aimed at children. A 2022 study of apps usedby 3–5-year-olds found that the majority used manipulative design features, including
para-social relationship pressure, fabricated time pressure, navigation constraints, andlures to encourage longer gameplay or more purchases. Only 20% of apps had no
manipulative design features. The research also showed that apps with manipulative
design features were more commonly used by children from lower socioeconomic
backgrounds.38

Anthony Wagner, associate Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, explains “Where there are multiple sourcesof information... [users] are not able to filter out what’s not relevant to their current goal. That failure to filter means
they’re slowed down by irrelevant information.”
38 J. Radesky et al., “Prevalence and Characteristics of Manipulative Design in Mobile Applications Used by Children”,
JAMA Network Open, Vol. 5/6 (2022)
37

DISRUPTED CHILDHOOD – The Cost of Persuasive Design

21

The dopamine hit
Human beings respond to the promise of a reward by releasing a chemical in the brain
known as dopamine.39 In some settings the reward is obvious; for example, anaffirmation, such as a ‘Like’ from another user. Others are less understood, forexample, bubbles to indicate another user is typing or a ‘read’ receipt. The anticipation
triggers a small release of dopamine, which technology theorist Dr. Michael Chorust has
described as the brain’s “reward-seeking drug”. Once the reward has been absorbed,
the dopamine fades, leaving the desire for more.

“The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that
we have created are destroying how society works… No
civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation,
mistruth.”Chamath Palihapitiya, former vice-president of User Growth, Facebook

Children’s predilection to seek immediate gratification is developmentally driven andmakes them particularly susceptible to habit-forming rewards.40 It means it is difficult
for them to ignore the prospect of a dopamine reward, even when this conflicts withother essential daily activities, such as sleeping or eating.41
Notifications
Human beings respond to noises, movements and light. It is a necessity borne from ourhunter-gatherer forebears who needed to be alert to the presence of predators or otherdangers.42 Notifying, or summonsing, is one of the most powerful strategies of
persuasive design. It comes in many forms - pop-up messages; short, long, or insistentvibrations; surges of light or sharp sounds. All are designed to create a sense ofurgency, which acts as a powerful summons. Often the only way to stop the influx of
notifications is to comply with the call for attention.

“I constantly feel like when I’m doing my homework I
want to go and pick up my phone, just to see what’s
happening on Snapchat... they tell you when someone
is typing so I feel like you get that double notification…
your phone just keeps vibrating,”
Aged 16

K Berridge & T Robinson, ‘What is the role of dopamine in reward: hedonic impact, reward learning, or incentive
salience?’, Brain Research Reviews, 28 (1998). Referenced in ‘Why we’re all addicted to texts, Twitter and Google’, Dr.
Susan Weinschenk, Psychology Today (11 September 2012)
40 Between 10–12 years old, children find it hard to think of the longer-term consequences and seek immediate rewards.
(See p. 18, ‘Digital Childhood: Addressing Childhood Development Milestones in the Digital Environment’, 2017)41 B Carter et al, ’Association between portable screen-based media device access or use and sleep outcomes’, JAMA
Pediatrics, 170(12) 1202-1208 (2016)
42 This is known as the ‘orienting reflex’ (See Chapter 4.1. ‘Treatment of Attentional Problems’, G DeGangi, Pediatric
Disorders of Regulation in Affect and Behavior, Second Edition (2017)39

DISRUPTED CHILDHOOD – The Cost of Persuasive Design

22“You can’t leave it because you’d be up all nightanswering the old messages and the new ones asking
why you didn’t answer the first message — sometimes I
get LITERALLY hundreds.”
Aged 14

Children are less able than adults to prioritise competing demands so tend to answer
the newest first, instilling a habit of responding to ‘the new’.43 This has profound
implications since routines and habits formed before the age of nine are unlikely tochange in adulthood.
Habit-forming summons are further enhanced by machine learning and artificial
intelligence systems which are able to learn when a user is most likely to respond, so
send notifications at an ‘optimal time’.44 Demands and invitations, such as ‘tap here’,‘watch, ‘accept’, ‘Like’, ‘agree’, ‘share’, ‘post’ or ‘read’ may seem small but will
frictionlessly lead to further demands for action.

“When I walk around and see people staring at theirphones often it’s because they’ve taken out theirphones to look at notifications, that’s something I feelis not going in the right direction for society.”45
Justin Rosenstein, co-designer of the Like button

The UK’s Age Appropriate Design Code encourages the use of positive nudges tosupport children’s health and wellbeing. It gives recommendations for different
techniques that will encourage wellbeing enhancing behaviours, such asencouragement to take breaks or mid-level pauses and save features.46 Following
the introduction of the AADC in 2021, TikTok no longer sends push notifications to
13-15 years olds after 9pm, or to 16–17-year-olds after 10pm.

Whilst notifications can be switched off, this action almost always triggers warnings tousers that they risk missing out on new content.47 Users are then forced to weigh up the
intrusiveness of the notifications against their fear of missing out. For many children,
this represents an impossible choice. The persuasive strategy of constant summons
creates an exhausting level of demand that exploits a child’s human instinct to respond.

Chamath Palihapitiya, ‘On money as an Instrument of Change’, Stanford Business School (13 November 2017)
Discussed in ‘Former Facebook exec says social media is ripping apart society’, The Verge, 11 December 2017
44 “Optimal Time uses a machine learning algorithm to automatically predict when a user is likely to open your push. It
sees the highest success rates. Optimal Time accounts for users’ individual engagement patterns, sending push
notifications when users are prone to open the app. The intelligence of the algorithm contributes to much higher open
rates.” Leanplum, ‘Personalize or Bust: the Impact on App Engagement’ (2016)
45 Alphr, ‘The inventor of the Facebook Like: “There’s always going to be unintended consequences.”’ (20 October 2017)
46 Information Commissioner’s Office, Age Appropriate Design: a code of practice for online services (standard 13: nudge
techniques), (2020)
47 New Statesman, ‘Pushier notifications: how social media is getting more invasive’ (28 June 2017)43

DISRUPTED CHILDHOOD – The Cost of Persuasive Design

23

In this example, there
is a request (‘please’)and an incentive(“you’ll be able to see
Snaps & Chats”) toturn on notifications.
The option to agree ispre-selected with ablue circle.

Randomised reward mechanisms
Variable rewards, also known as ‘randomised reward mechanisms’ (RRMs), hold aspecial thrill, as the user anticipates a reward that they know could come but istantalisingly just out of reach. A gambler waiting to see where the roulette wheel willstop or a viewer watching a presenter’s dramatic pause before they announce a winner:in both cases, the individual experiences a dopamine rush as they anticipate theunknown outcome. Online services are littered with these apparently benign reward
features.

Professor Adam Alter explains: “...it’s not guaranteed that you’re going to get Likes
on your posts. And it’s the unpredictability of that process that makes it so addictive.
If you knew that every time you posted something you’d get 100 Likes, it would
become boring really fast.”48

Loot boxes
Loot boxes are randomised reward mechanisms
found in video games. Players purchase loot boxes
using real-world or virtual (in-game) currency, thenreceive an apparently randomly generated reward.
The player does not know what reward they will
receive before purchasing. Over half of the top
100 grossing mobile games on the Apple and
Google app stores contain loot boxes. At the endof 2019, the loot box market in the UK was
estimated to be worth £700 million.49
There is a growing body of evidence that suggests
a link between loot box use and problem
gambling, resembling a ‘dose-response’ (i.e.
dopamine driven) relationship. This is
unsurprising, given the similarities between lootboxes and gambling products. A 2019 study foundthat 76% of 10–16-year-olds feel that online video
games try to make you spend as much money as
possible. Children generally have less developed
impulse control and a limited understanding ofpurchasing decisions and likely outcomes.50

Business Insider, ‘What happens to your brain when you get a Like on Instagram’ (25 March 2017)
D. Zendle, R. Meyer, P. Cairns, S. Waters and N. Ballou, The prevalence of loot boxes in mobile and desktop
games. Addiction, 115: 1768– 1772 (2020)
50 Parent Zone, The Rip-Off Games How the new business model of online gaming exploits children (August 2019)
48
49

DISRUPTED CHILDHOOD – The Cost of Persuasive Design

24

The Belgium Gambling Commission banned loot boxes in video games in 2018,claiming they were "in violation of gambling legislation." Since then, the video gamedeveloper Blizzard has confirmed that one of its most popular games will not containloot boxes, and EA games will allow players to see the contents of loot boxes before
purchasing. But as it stands, many of the most popular games among children are still
littered with loot boxes and other random rewards.
As policymakers in other jurisdictions begin to accept the comparable design andimpact of loot boxes and gambling products, other appropriate regulation will likely
come into force. In July 2022, the UK Government concluded after a period of
consultation that children should not be able to purchase loot boxes unless enabled bya parent or guardian.
However, it is likely that until regulation focuses on random rewards as a category offeature, loot boxes in games will likely be replaced by other forms of persuasive designthat apply the same principles behind randomised reward mechanisms.
Thousands of games use reward mechanisms to make playing compulsive. What is lessapparent is that the same persuasive strategies are woven into most other digital
services, such as social media, shopping, news, education or even entertainment. They
prime users to repeat behaviours; as the loop becomes ingrained so the action
becomes a habit. Neuroscientist Norman Doidge explains that the brain is not static butthat conditioning (repeated activities) alters it.
The ability for the brain to change is called ‘neuroplasticity’;51 this makes it morecapable of adapting to a changing environment, but also more vulnerable to outside
influencers.52
A user’s device is the means to access rewards; an equally integral part of the loop.
Users habitually touch their pocket, bag or phone to check for their smartphone andthen reactivate it in order to generate new rewards.

Social proof and fear of missing out
Human beings are social creatures. Persuasive design strategies exploit the natural
human desire to be social and popular. For young people, social validation requires
constant attention, curation and renewal. At key development stages it can be
overwhelmingly important to be accepted by your peer group.53 A 2021 UK survey foundthat 1 in 5 children regularly compare themselves, their success and their happiness to thepeople they follow online.54“A social validation feedback loop... exactly the kind ofthing that a hacker like myself would come up with,

N. Doidge, ‘The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science’, Penguin(2007)
52 Ibid
53 At 13 to 15-years-old, children are “Highly dependent on peers for a sense of wellbeing. They need to feel as if they arepart of a group.” (See: ‘Digital Childhood: Addressing Childhood Development Milestones in the Digital Environment,
2017)
54 Ditch the Label, The Wirless Report 2021
51

DISRUPTED CHILDHOOD – The Cost of Persuasive Design

25

because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human
psychology.”
Sean Parker, former Facebook president

Fear of missing out, or ‘FoMO’, is described by Professor Andrew Przybylski as “apervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which
one is absent”.55 Those who regularly experience FoMO display a slavish need to stayonline just in case they miss an opportunity for personal validation. Others may
experience FoMO through the self-perception of their own status, passively watchingothers they believe to be more popular than they are, which only exacerbates their
feelings of missing out. Such ‘pervasive apprehension’ is fuelled by automated andtargeted messages pointing to the activity of other users in an individual’s network (andthe network of their network) revealing a vast swathe of activity from which they, thenon-active user, is excluded.

“Companies target your paranoia to make you feelyou’re missing out and that if you’re not online
something drastic concerning you may happen.”
Aged 16Those with FoMO use social media much more compulsively, including checking social
media accounts as soon as they wake up, during mealtimes and last thing at night. The
need to quantify relationships, and the associated pressure to not miss something,compels a child to enter a cycle in which they act and share continuously, thereby
extending their time online.
Popularity metrics
Quantifying friends, followers, likes or scores creates a metric of personal value. At aglance, one user can see how many reactions another is getting and measurethemselves against that. Content ranked by popularity in a newsfeed is given pride ofplace on the screen and algorithms designed to promote the already popular help it
travel further, while the engagement rates climb.

“When you see other people posting, and you see...what
other people like and comment on... It tells society‘that's your popularity’, based on how many likes you
get.”
Aged 16

A. Przybylski et al, ‘Motivational, emotional, and behavioral correlates of fear of missing out’, Computers in Human
Behavior, Volume 29, Issue 4, pp. 1841-1848 (July 2013)
55

DISRUPTED CHILDHOOD – The Cost of Persuasive Design26“It becomes almost stressful to post anything, because
the amount of likes you get is your social standing. Your
popularity or how much you’re liked is based upon
numbers on a screen.
Aged 16“You feel the need to use social media all the time inorder to be social or popular.”
Aged 14

Molly Russell was 14 when she ended her life after viewing graphic self-harm,suicide and depression related content on social media. The coroner leading theinquest into Molly’s death concluded that she had died from an act of self-harm
while suffering from depression and “the negative effects of online content.”56
The coroner observed that while the content itself was harmful, it was madeconsiderably worse by features such as comments, hashtags and likes, with someposts attracting over 10,000 likes. High numbers of likes and comments created asense of legitimacy and normalised the extreme content, and as the coroner noted“glamorised and even glorified self-harm.”

56

Courts and Tribunals Judiciary, Molly Russell: Prevention of Future Deaths Report, (13 October 2022)

DISRUPTED CHILDHOOD – The Cost of Persuasive Design

27

Design choices such as hearts that visualise‘likes’ exploit the desire for social affirmation
which is strong in children and young people.
There have been cases of children as young as 7
years old being pressured into performing sexualacts on livestreams in exchange for likes. During
the Covid-19 lockdowns, with children spending
more time at home, online, there was a marked
increase in the volume of ‘self-generated’ childsexual abuse material i.e. under 18s producing
and sharing sexual images or videos ofthemselves. Self-generated imagery increased
77% in 2020 compared to the year before, thematerial predominantly involving girls aged 11 to
13 years old, in their bedrooms. Sadly, the age
children producing and sharing this kind ofimagery is getting younger, and the number ofcases rising; in 2021 there was a three-foldincrease in self-generated imagery depicting 710-year-olds.57

byof“It feels good to be appreciated by loads of people…
it makes you want to do it again.”
Aged 16

Research from the UK regulator Ofcom shows that children’s behaviour is influenced by’high performing’ content (content with high engagement figures) that is shocking or
extreme in nature. Knowing that more shocking or attention-grabbing content receives
more engagement, some children take risks in pursuit of the visible approval and senseof validation they would receive from other users.58
Bubbles, streaks, gifts and receipts
Part of being a social animal is a sense of obligation weighted against the nature anddepth of the social bond. Most people feel a greater obligation to their trusted circle offamily and friends than to the broad network of people they know less well, andsignificantly more than their obligations to those at the furthest fringes of theircommunity.
By contrast, online reciprocity frequently extends indiscriminately to as many people
as possible in the user’s network so that, in addition to intentional acts of social
validation or communication, it can require large numbers of responses that do not
acknowledge the complexity or limits of the relationships. Young people engaged in
swiftly changing friendship patterns are held to old obligations or made to feel guilty
about moving on. This presents a perfect scenario for social anxiety.
The obligations baked into services are presented in a manner that deliberately punish
inaction, for example, by letting the sender know when the recipient has received or

57
58

Internet Watch Foundation, Annual Report 2021 (2022)
Ofcom and Revealing Reality, Research into risk factors that may lead children to online harm, (October 2022)

DISRUPTED CHILDHOOD – The Cost of Persuasive Design28

read a message. Knowing someone knows that you are online creates a heightened
obligation to respond. Creating large quantities of social obligations within online
relationships offers not only the exhausting prospect of constant social management,
but can prevent the development of more nuanced and satisfying relationships driven
by personal choice, not numerical highs.
For children at different development stages, their peers represent a powerful mirror of
status and identity. Persuasive design strategies that emphasise quantity over quality
create the backdrop for social anxiety and issues of self-esteem.

Snapchat scores and streaks
Snapchat assigns users ‘scores’ based on their activity and engagement. The moreinteractions a user has with others (snaps sent and received), and the more content
they consume and share, the higher their score. When two Snapchat users send eachother a snap a day for three days in a row, they start a streak. The ‘goal’ is to keep thestreak going for as long as possible. As the unbroken streak rises, it becomes a way ofquantifying a friendship. It is common for children to maintain multiple streaks withcompeting friendships or to build streaks with children they don’t know well to appear
popular.
‘Streak management’ can be time-consuming anddistracting. The user is notified each time they receive a
snap, which acts as a prompt to reciprocate. The
compulsion to maintain the streaks, coupled with theneed to not let others down, means that it is not unusual
for children to get friends or siblings to ‘babysit’ theirstreaks at times they are unable to access their phones.
Breaking a streak is often viewed as an indictment of afriendship. To avoid these socially awkward events, users
are obliged to send multiple snaps a day irrespective ofthe quality of the relationship or the content of thecommunication. This cycle of obligation is deliberately
designed to encourage repeat visits to Snapchat.
The maintenance of children’s streaks can run into many
hours a week. In a 5Rights workshop, children wereastonished by their weekly total time spent on Snapchat.
One boy discovered that he had spent 32 hours on theapp - effectively four working days - during each of theprevious three weeks.

“I’d probably change Snapchat score because I thinkthat’s encouraging people so much to try and go on
Snapchat as much as possible.” Aged 16

DISRUPTED CHILDHOOD – The Cost of Persuasive Design

29“(There is) pressure of losing your friends and ending
lifelong friendships if you forget to send a streak oneday.” Aged 13
Ephemeral content
Content that ‘expires’ following a period or after a certain action has been taken
generates a sense of urgency and artificial scarcity. This sense of scarcity creates
demand: if young people know that their friends’ posts will disappear at the end of theday, or only appear at a certain time, they are more likely to engage at certain times, orcheck the app routinely.
BeReal is a photo sharing app that
sends users a daily notificationencouraging them to share aphoto of themselves and theirlocation during a twominute window. Every day
at a different time, the app
sends a notification to allusers instructing them toshare a photo in 2 minutes.
This notification uses the warning
sign emoji with a “2 minutes left”
message to create a sense of urgency, with a reference to friends on the app
to generate a fear of missing out.

Seamlessness
Routinely, the amount of time required or spent doing online tasks is concealed.
The decision to continue watching, playing or scrolling is removed from the user anddesigned into the service in one seamless user experience.

“Sometimes I get home from school and spend hours
scrolling through my phone, and I find it hard to stopeven when I’m not reallyinterested anymore. Sometimes
I’m actually grateful when myphone runs out of battery
because it forces me to breakaway from scrolling for a bit.”
Aged 16

Infinite scroll
Perhaps the most common design technique foundon social media, infinite scroll. In the early part ofthe 2010s, infinite scroll became a standard

DISRUPTED CHILDHOOD – The Cost of Persuasive Design

30

feature of digital design practice. Infinite scroll eliminates natural breaking points in auser flow, removing any obvious opportunities to take a break or stop. Infinite scroll
consolidated its position as persuasive design strategy supreme when the majority ofsocial media consumption tipped from desktop to mobile, with users swiping with theirthumbs, rather than clicking buttons, to reach additional content.

“Scrolling forever gives me a sick feeling in my stomach. I’m soaware of how little control I have and the feeling of needing to beonline and always consuming.” Aged 18
Autoplay
When video or audio content plays without initiation from the user, conscious
engagement can tilt towards unintentional use. Content that autoplays is determined byrecommendation algorithms and based on what the user has previously liked, shared orotherwise engaged with.
In 2021, YouTube disabled autoplay for users under the age of 18 and all accounts on
YouTube Kids. This coincided with the meteoric rise of TikTok, where children areserved short-form videos in a never-ending stream of algorithmically generated,
autoplaying content. In a recent survey, the UK communication regulator found thatchildren spoke favourably of the automatic serving of content in TikTok, as it removed
the need “to make any decisions or actively look for things to engage with.”59“On YouTube you have to decide what to watch all thetime and sometimes I can never think what to pick…
But on TikTok it just comes up for you.”60

Aged 12

Dopamine hits, social proof and FoMO, and seamlessness are useful ‘buckets’ tocategorise common persuasive design strategies, but they also characterise the various
emotions and experience of children online. Now we have described the most common
persuasive design features, and the commercial incentives that justify their use, wemust examine their impact on children and childhood.

5960

Ofcom, Children and parents: media use and attitudes report 2022, Ofcom (March 2022)
Ofcom, Children’s Media Lives (2022)

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Chapter Four
The impact of persuasive design on childhood
Young adults today are the first generation to have grown up with social media. Whilepersuasive design existed long before the internet, its prevalence in digital technologies
has had a palpable impact on a generation of children who grew up with ready accessto a smartphone. In this chapter we examine the effects of persuasive design strategies
on children’s lives.
Mental health and wellbeing
Our childhood and teenage years are a time of intense cognitive development andneuro-psychological change. At different stages, we test boundaries, explore different
forms of social interaction, experiment with identities, develop skills in emotional
regulation and come to experience feelings of shame and social comparison. We have
explained how the need for social validation creates a habit of needing more. Managing
public and frequent interactions online creates enormous pressures for young people,
and with it comes anxiety, low self-esteem and mental health challenges at everincreasing levels.61“I just feel like now I need to be on social media to try
and get that happiness booster all the time, even though
I hate it.”Aged 15

For many years, we were cautioned not to mistake correlation with causation in relation
to rising social media use and lower levels of life satisfaction and wellbeing among
teens. But it has not escaped the attention of researchers, parents and children
themselves that the arrival and widespread adoption of social media between 2009
and 2012 coincided with a “collapse in teen mental health” that continues today. 62
From 2009 to 2019, the proportion of US high school students reporting persistentfeelings of sadness or hopelessness increased by 40%.63 Mounting evidence of thepositive correlation between high social media use and mood disorders has refocused
attention on those aspects of the online world, including persuasive design, that may
contribute to lower wellbeing, and exacerbate existing mental disorders among teens.64
The correlation between social media use and wellbeing among young people depends
on a number of factors. It is important to recognise that not all children are the same,and children’s experiences online are shaped by multiple environmental and personal
factors, including age, developmental capacity, gender, sexuality, and familial

In 2022, 18% of UK children aged 7 to 16 had a probable mental disorder, compared to 12.1% in 2017 (See: NHS,
Mental Health of Children and Young People In England (November 2022))
62 The number of US teenagers with depression doubled between 2011 and 2019, with more than 23% of girls ages 1217 experienced a major depressive episode during 2019. (See: US National Survey on Drug Use and Health 2020
(2020))
63 U.S. Surgeon General, Protecting Youth Mental Health: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory (2021)
64 J Elhai et al, ‘Problematic smartphone use: a conceptual overview and systematic review of relations with anxiety anddepression psychopathology’, Journal of Affective Disorders 207, 251-259 (2017)61

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circumstances. It follows that there will be certain groups of children, at certain times,
who will be more vulnerable to the effects of persuasive design. Children will experience
periods of increased sensitivity relative to their developmental stage, but notnecessarily at the same age. In girls, for example, social media use between the ages of
11 and 13 years is associated with a decrease in life satisfaction the following year,
whereas in boys this happens later between the ages of 14 and 15 years, suggestingthat sensitivity to social media is linked to developmental changes that occur later inboys than girls.65
Many studies have found that the correlation between social media use and harm isstronger among girls. Facebook’s own internal research, revealed by whistle-blower
Frances Haugen, showed that among teenage girls experiencing suicidal thoughts, 6%in the US and 13% in the UK traced those thoughts back to Instagram. A third ofteenage girls also believed that Instagram made them feel worse about those theirbodies.66“Social media sites trap girls in a spiral questioning their attractiveness and selfworth. They’re encouraged to compare themselves to others and seek approval for
the way they look, while reinforcing beauty standards that favour thinness andwhiteness.”67-

Nancy Jo Sales, author of American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers

Caught up in reward loops and automated cycles of dopamine highs and lows, children
and teens, at critical stages of their development, are acutely sensitive to the effects ofpersuasive design, that evidence suggests is contributing to lower levels of wellbeing
and life satisfaction.
Bullying and aggression
The culture of excessive sharing online has resulted in an epidemic of self-doubt,
anxiety, low self-esteem and increases in inter-personal aggression and online
bullying.68 In the UK, 1 in 8 social media users aged 11 to 16 report being bulled online,
rising to more than 1 in 4 among those with a ‘probable mental disorder’.69 And in theUS, nearly half of teen girls were cyberbullied in 2022.70
An excessive amount of sharing can also lead to exaggerating, polarising andaggressive behaviour, fuelled by the need to get noticed. Research from the YouthEndowment Fund in 2022 found that 55% of teens had seen real life acts of violence onsocial media in the last 12 months, and 62% who had committed an act of violence
themselves thought social media played a major role in why children commit violence.71

A. Orben, A. Przybylski, SJ. Blakemore, et al, Windows of developmental sensitivity to social media. Nat Commun 13,1649 (2022)
66 Wall Street Journal, ‘Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show’ (September 2021)
67 Nancy Jo Sales, ‘Teen girls are struggling. They need our help’, The Guardian (February 2023)
68 C. Woods & H. Scott ‘#sleepyteens: social media use in adolescents is associated with poor sleep quality, anxiety,depression, and low self-esteem’, Journal of Adolescence, 2015;
69 NHS, Mental Health of Children and Young People In England (November 2022))
70 Pew Research Center, Teens and Cyberbullying (2022)
71 Youth Endowment Fund, ‘Children, violence and vulnerability 2022: A Youth Endowment Fund report into young
people’s experiences of violence’ (2022)
65

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As the difference between ‘online’ and ‘offline’ has become less distinct, the negative
effects of children’s offline experiences carry over into their ‘online’ lives and vice versa.
In most cases, children who experience bullying offline are more likely to experiencebullying online. Similarly, content and interactions online that feel more personal,
familiar or local can impact a young person’s ‘offline’ behaviour; an Ofcom reportexamining online risk factors included testimony from one 13-year-old girl who now
avoids people and places in her local area due to content she sees online. 72
Relationships
Online relationships can enrich a child’s social and emotional life, especially for thosechildren who may be isolated in other settings. However, the persistent demands tointeract and seek validation from others can diminish their quality of relationships,
putting quantity before quality. It can also reduce levels of emotional understanding andcreate conflict, particularly in the home. A 2022 study has found that two thirds (65%)
of parents in Australia experience conflict and tension with their children around theuse of digital technology,73 corroborating earlier findings that most friction is caused bydisagreements over time spent online rather than those over types of content thatmight be engaged with.74“Often, we can be right next to each other and still be
Snapchatting each other.”
Aged 15“The wrong photo can lead to school-wide or even national infamy, cyberbullying
from strangers, and a permanent scarlet letter. Performative social media also puts
girls into a trap: those who choose not to play the game are cut off from theirclassmates. Instagram and TikTok have become wired into the way teens interact,much as the telephone became essential to past generations.”-

Professor Jonathan Haidt

Despite the huge potential of online services to connect people and enrichrelationships, it can also have an inverse effect on young people, who may withdraw
and become more isolated. Confronted by highly curated depictions of the lifestyles,
friendships and relationships of others, young people can develop an unrealistic world
view, believing ‘everyone is happy, except me’.75

Ofcom and Revealing Reality, Research into risk factors that may lead children to online harm, p21 (October 2022)
Stephanie C. Milford, Lynette Vernon, Joseph J. Scott, Nicola F. Johnson, "An Initial Investigation into Parental
Perceptions Surrounding the Impact of Mobile Media Use on Child Behavior and Executive Functioning", Human Behavior
and Emerging Technologies, vol. 2022
74 S. Livingstone, A. Blum-Ross, J. Pavlick, and K. Ólafsson, In the Digital Home, how Do Parents Support their Children
and Who Supports them? Parenting for a Digital Future: Survey Report 1, The London School of Economics and Political
Science: Department of Media and Communications (2018)75 Prof. Clifford Nass, ‘Multitasking may harm the social and emotional development of tweenage girls, but face-to-facetalks could save the day, say Stanford researchers’, Stanford News (25 January 2012)
72
73

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Nearly half of Gen Z survey participants reported feeling negatively about theirfinances from spending time on social platforms, and more than 3 in 5 parents
whose children use social media say it has contributed to their children having
unrealistic expectations about money.76

Parasocial relationships and attachments have also become more common with therise of influencer culture, where children and young people develop one-sided
relationships with celebrities or online influencers. These relationships are complicatedfurther by the financial incentives for influencers to push certain products of services.
As academics Rachel Berryman and Professor Misha Kavka note, “the combination ofcommodification and intimacy can make it difficult for children to realise that theperson on-screen is not their ‘friend’, and the video is not a playdate”.77“From the child’s point of view, it might be a very intense and seemingly personal
interaction that they have with that influencer that offers them an identity and offers
them a sense of a community that they can belong to… [This quality] can be used toinspire or to offer positive messages, but the influencer is pretty much at liberty to
say what they want, whether it is disinformation or inappropriate sexualisation or
advertising and marketing.”-

Professor Sonia Livingstone

Seeking validation from others, many children and young people feel pressured into
producing, sharing or engaging with sexualised content online. 1 in 4 girls in the UK
have shared a sexual image of themselves and of those, a quarter said they felt
pressured into it, and almost a third initially wanted to but later regretted it. Despite
most social media and online gaming services disallowing nudity, pornography, or
sexually explicit content, this kind of material is readily accessible, and on many
services, actively pushed to children and young people through content
recommendation systems. The preponderance of pornographic material on social
media has a corrosive effect on young people’s views of healthy relationships, withabusive sexual behaviour and physical contact being normalised.
A survey by the NSPCC and the Children’s Commissioner for England found that 44% ofboys aged between 11 and 16 who regularly viewed pornographic content reported thatit gave them ideas about the type of sex that they wanted to try. Most young people also
said girls expect sex to involve physical aggression, such as airway restriction. This
corroborates findings from the UK school’s regulator as part of its review into sexual
abuse in schools, which found that “children and young people… had learned more
about sexuality from social media than from school or had got their education about
relationships from their peers and social media.”78

Sarah Foster, ‘Survey: Social Media makes nearly half of Gen Z and Millennials feel negatively about their finances’,
Bankrate (July 2022)
77 Rachel Berryman and Misha Kavka, ‘I Guess A Lot of People See Me as a Big Sister or a Friend’: the role of intimacy inthe celebrification of beauty vloggers’, Journal of Gender Studies, volume 26:3, pp 307–320 (2017)78 Ofsted, Review of sexual abuse in schools and colleges (June 2021)
76

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Pathological use and addiction
Just as some children are more vulnerable to certain online hazards and harms thanothers, some have a propensity to use digital devices and online services to excess.
Once again, we find ourselves asking in which direction this correlative relationships
flows: does technology cause excessive use or is excessive use a symptom of apredisposition to addictive behaviour? We have already shown how certain persuasive
design features tap into deeply ingrained human impulses, and evidence fromlongitudinal studies is beginning to show the effects of these strategies on developing
teenage brains.79 While there is clearly a strong correlative relationship between
frequent use of social media and certain disorders and behaviours among young people,
the notion of ‘addiction’ to digital technologies is still a contested one.
But increasingly, we hear children’s engagement online, notably with social media andgaming, being described in terms of an ‘addicts’ narrative, not least by children andyoung people themselves. A 2019 research study found that 1 in 4 young people show
signs of ‘problematic smartphone usage’, associated with increased odds ofdepression, anxiety, higher perceived stress and poorer sleep quality.80 And in 2019,
the World Health Organisation classified ‘gaming disorder’ as a mental health condition.
That same year, the first National Centre for Gaming Disorders opened in the UK withapproximately 70% of their patients aged 18 or younger.
Whistle-blower Frances Haugen revealed that according to Meta’s own estimates,
five to six percent of 14-year-old Instagram users “have the self-awareness to admit”
that they have no control over their usage and that it is materially harming theirhealth or schoolwork, adding that, in fact, “it is likely that far more than five to six
per cent of 14-year-olds are addicted to Instagram.”81

Interestingly, children and young people themselves often describe their usage andengagement with digital devices using language associated with addiction. A 2022
survey found that 42% of young people self-reported what they considered to be earlysigns of addiction to social media. They wanted companies to ‘prioritise the mental
health of consumers rather than making it as addictive as possible’ and to ‘remove[the] addictive features.’ 80% reported that they wanted to leave a social media
platform for wellbeing reasons but felt like they were unable to.82“The more time you use social media the more addicted
you are and there is no control over it.”Aged 15

For example, a 3-year research study of 12-year-olds from schools in the US found a strong correlation between
habitual ‘checking behaviours’ on social media and changes in the brain’s sensitivity to social rewards and punishment.
(See: MT Maza, KA Fox, S Kwon et al. Association of Habitual Checking Behaviors on Social Media With Longitudinal
Functional Brain Development. JAMA Paediatrics, (January 2023))
80 S.Y. Sohn, P. Rees, B. Wildridge et al, Prevalence of problematic smartphone usage and associated mental healthoutcomes amongst children and young people: a systematic review, meta-analysis and GRADE of the evidence. BMC
Psychiatry 19, 356 (2019)
81 iNews, ‘Millions more teenagers could be addicted to Instagram than is known, says Facebook whistleblower, theIndependent’ (October 2021)
82 YoungMinds, Online Safety Survey (2022)
79

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When excessive behaviour becomes pathological
Dr Henrietta Bowden-Jones, Imperial College London, expert on behavioural
addictions
Some children and young people have a higher propensity towards using
smartphones and tablets to excess. This changes over time and is closely linked toresilience as well as the ability to withstand environmental stimuli in a positive andconstructive way.
From my experience working with young people who experience significant
compulsive behaviours, their inability to manage the amount of time they spend
online playing games, watching YouTube or being on social media is often closely
linked to emotional states that may feel overwhelming. These are normally negative
ones such as low mood, anger, feelings of abandonment and fear of social
exclusion.
At times, these behaviours worsen as the young person disengages from previously
rewarding activities and relationships in the real world. Someone may stop attending
netball team practice or their music lessons and thus cut themselves off from awhole series of nurturing and positive relationships fuelled by shared interests toseek out online relationships with fellow gamers or friends. The more isolated theperson becomes, the more likely they are to turn towards online activities tosupplement the loss of interaction. Many end up as recluses in their bedroom when
their activity has intensified in terms of hours.
There is an ongoing debate as to whether some of these intense compulsive
behaviours can be deemed to be addictions. For example, if someone is gaming 14
hours a day, he may be defined as suffering from Gaming Disorder. A young person
playing online poker all night may be suffering from Gambling Disorder.
However, there are many more young people who use social media and gaming inan excessive way who, while not addicted, still use their mobile phones and tablets
too intensely. This problematic use is often an attempt to navigate the difficulties ofgrowing up in contemporary society.
Driving users to understand the need for screen-free time, for exercise and for reallife interactions is part of a stimulus control approach to shaping behaviour that will
benefit everyone, whatever their age.

Dr. Caroline Fisher similarly argues that pathological internet use affects an individual’s
sense of wellbeing and can lead to social withdrawal, self-neglect, poor diet and family
conflict.83 A study of 1,613 adolescents aged 10 to 16 years from secondary schools innorthern and central UK found that there was a significant positive correlation between
problematic internet use and substance abuse, mediated by bullying andvictimisation.84

V Murali, S George, ‘Lost Online: an Overview of Internet Addiction, Advances in Psychiatric Treatment’, Advances in
Psychiatric Treatment, 13, 24-30 (2007) (Referred to in ‘Getting Plugged In: An Overview of Internet Addiction’, Dr.
Caroline Flisher, Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health pp. 557–559, Volume 46, Issue 10 (October 2010))
84 M. Samara, A.A. Massarwi, A. El-Asam, S. Hammuda, P.K. Smith & H. Morsi, ‘The mediating role of bullying andvictimisation on the relationship between problematic internet use and substance abuse among adolescents in the UK:
The parent-child relationship as a moderator’, Frontiers in Psychiatry, 12, (2021)
83

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Opportunity cost
There is an undeniable truth that if you spend (or lose) a great deal of time doing one
thing, something else must ‘give’. This is the opportunity cost.

“All I want to do is disconnect from my phone for a long
period of time, perhaps weeks, but there are always
pressures preventing me. I love the way the internet
allows for lots of new opportunities, yet it prevents mefrom doing a lot of things.”
Aged 17

The potential to access information, creative activities, undertake research or build andmaintain important relationships online must not be ignored. Research published by the
UK communications regulator, Ofcom, found that “features that reduce friction may
encourage children to use platforms or games for extended periods, contributing toopportunity costs… children find it easy to keep consuming content, prolonging theamount of time they spend online.”85
But out of an average 8 hours and 39 minutes of daily screen time, the typical teenager
spends just 12 minutes on creative activities. For pre-teen children aged 8-12, thisfigure is even lower, at just eight minutes a day.86“I love reading, but by the time I’ve spent an hour too
long on my phone, I can no longer read my book.”
Aged 17“The capacity for boredom is the single most important development ofchildhood. The capacity to self-soothe, go into your mind, go into yourimagination. Children who are constantly being stimulated by a phone don’t
learn how to be alone, and if you don’t teach a child how to be alone, they will
always be lonely.”87-

Professor Sherry Turkle“You lose precious time with your friends and family thatyou cannot get back.”
Aged 13

Ofcom and Revealing Reality, Research into risk factors that may lead children to online harm, (October 2022)
Common Sense, ‘The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Tweens and Teens’, p41 (2021)
87 IMB, ‘Breaking free of our addictions to persuasive technology’ (18 May 2017)
85
86

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Development of memory is another opportunity cost. Dr. Benjamin Storm’s research oninternet use and memory found that when participants were allowed to use Google toanswer questions, they used it even when they already knew the answer.88 He
commented: “Memory is changing. Our research shows that as we use the internet tosupport and extend our memory we become more reliant on it. Whereas before wemight have tried to recall something on our own, now we don’t bother.”89
Memory and imagination share the same set of development and cognitive needs as‘agency’ — that is, children making choices based on information that they canunderstand in conditions that allow for those choices to be meaningful.90
The development of memory is a key component of creating an individual’s identity,
holding shared experiences and therefore forming a group identity — a necessity forbuilding and maintaining communities and society.
Perhaps one of the most publicised opportunity costs of compulsive device use is sleep
deprivation. A 2021 review of evidence found that electronic media use is associatedwith shorter sleep duration in children and adolescents, and for young teens aged 1315 there were additional associations between screen time and problems falling
asleep, and between social media use and poor sleep quality.91“I spent 14 hours on the computer in one day learning [acomputer game]; I was up until 3am the next day.”Aged 17“It is hard to live in a technological society and not get
trapped in social media. You find that someone does it
so you do too, and after a while you are addicted andmiss out on things in life.”
Aged 14

Results from a three-year pilot programme in Canada that developed a school-based
sleep promotion programme for students, found that children who do not get enoughquality sleep are more likely to have excess body weight, poorer diet quality, and lower
physical activity levels.92
The opportunity cost of attracting and keeping children online impacts on theircreativity, autonomy, memory, sleep and education.

B Storm, S Stone, A Benjamin, ‘Using the Internet to access information inflates future use of the Internet to accessother information’, Memory, pp.717–23 (2016)89 Science Daily, ‘Cognitive offloading: How the internet is increasingly taking over human memory’ (16 August 2016)
90 5Rights Foundation, Digital Childhood: Addressing Childhood Development Milestones in the Digital Environment’, p7(2017)
91 Lund, Lisbeth et al, ‘Electronic media use and sleep in children and adolescents in western countries: a systematic
review’, BMC public health vol. 21 (September 2021)
92 H Chahal et al, ‘Availability and night-time use of electronic entertainment and communication devices are associatedwith short sleep duration and obesity among Canadian children’, Pediatric Obesity (September 2012)88

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Let’s pretend: Creating opportunities to role play
Dr. Angharad Rudkin, Children’s Clinical Psychologist and Associate Fellow of the
British Psychological Society
We are entering unprecedented territory when it comes to parenting children in thedigital world. When television first made its appearance in the 1950s there waswidespread concern about the effect this would have on the way children learnt andplayed.
While today’s narrative about the digital world is not so full of suspicion and fear, weare dealing with a far more ubiquitous issue with children as young as three-yearsold having frequent access to smartphones and tablets.
The research is growing but still lags behind the rapid pace of technologicaldevelopment. What is clear, however, is that we have to understand each child’sdevelopmental needs in order to truly get to grips with the opportunities, as well as
the risks, of digital engagement.
For example, pretending or role playing is an essential pastime for two to fiveyear-olds. The opportunity to play at being a grown up or to pretend to be asuperhero serves an important function in terms of cognitive and social
development, of identifying with others and building self-identity.
Vast increases in digital use by pre-schoolers leaves less opportunity for important
self-propelled and imaginative play. The increase in digital play in this age groupmeans that pre-schoolers are engaging in different types and quantity of pretend
play, with, as yet unknown consequences.

Profiling, personalisation and surveillance
Arguably a persuasive design strategy in itself, personalisation is a powerful tool bywhich a user is persuaded to take a certain course of action, and ultimately, extend use.
Algorithms follow user behaviour patterns on such tight loops that they know the ‘exact’
mix of ingredients that will appeal to each individual user. When it comes to children,these algorithms collect extremely intimate personal data.

Lawyers Joe Newman, Joseph Jerome and Christopher Hazard explain that the movefrom standalone games to interactive online games brings with it a significant shift
in the ability for game designers to:“...collect and generate enormous amounts of information about their players, muchof which may be considered highly sensitive. This data includes information relating
to the real world, ranging from a player’s voice or physical appearance to [their]
location or social network. It also includes detailed information from the player’s
actions within the game world, which may be analysed to create in-depth profiles ofa player’s cognitive abilities and personality.”93

J Newman, J Jerome and C Hazard, ‘Press Start to Track?: Privacy and the New Questions Posed by Modern
Videogame Technology’, American Intellectual Property Law Association, Quarterly Journal (2014)93

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This loop of data gathering and profiling is a norm across the digital environment andcreates super-charged personalised profiling, described by Professor Lupton and Dr.
Williamson in their paper The Datafied Child as ‘dataveillance’.
Dataveillance (an amalgam of data surveillance) is defined as: “...the monitoring or
evaluation of children by themselves or others that may include recording andassessing details of their appearance, growth, development, health, social
relationships, moods, behaviour, educational achievements and other features.”94

This surveillance codifies presumptions and assumptions about a child’s nature, theircharacteristics and ambitions at a time when children and young people areexperimenting with, and exploring, their own identities. In this way, the system not only
investigates behaviour, it shapes it.95 Professor Lupton and Dr. Williamson express
concern that unless ‘scientific neutrality’ is imposed, children’s life chances and accessto opportunities will be increasingly shaped by ‘social sorting’ that has little or nooversight and is constructed to gather highly sensitive personal information that isextremely valuable for marketing and other commercial or as yet unknown purposes.96
The power of personalisation is not limited to commercial environments, and its
potential to ‘optimise’ services and processes both provided by and used withingovernment or local authorities is starting to come into mainstream use, with data now
ollected as users participate both as citizens and consumers.
Device dependence, the formation of hard-to-break habits, feelings of addiction andcompulsion are all widely reported by children.97 There are also questions about thelegality, ethics and safety of creating dependence and habits at a time of immaturity
and rapid development.
The fridge problem
Imagine a near future in which refrigerators can sense when a child is hungry andoffer snacks based on how much a company has paid for their product to besuggested. Who has responsibility for the nutritional needs of that child? Parent or
carer? The government? Or the company who controls the data gateway to thefridge? Or should the ‘perfect’ nutritional balance be built into the artificial
intelligence?
If so, should ‘perfect’ be set against income, ethnicity, an ecological footprint, a daily
read out of the child’s state of health, their family’s traditions, ethics of foodproduction, or simply based on what they ate yesterday? What if it doesn’t spot thediabetic, a religious dietary requirement, or a life-threatening allergy? And what ifthat hungry child yearns occasionally for a chocolate bar but is only ever offered acarrot stick?

D Lupton, B Williamson, ‘The Datafied Child: The Dataveillance of Children and Implications For Their Rights’, New
Media and Society, Vol 19, Issue 5, pp. 780-79 (23 January 2017)
95 R Botsam, ‘Who Can You Trust? How Technology Brought Us Together and Why It Could Drive Us Apart’, Penguin
Portfolio (October 2017)96 Ibid
97 Children’s Commissioner for England, ‘Life in Likes: Children’s Commissioner’s report into social media use among 8–
12 year-olds’ (January 2018)94

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Some of the questions raised by the Fridge Problem resemble existing ethicalquestions. Some are new. But a small set of questions about a smart fridge quickly
amplifies into profound questions about self-determination, rights, liability and agency.
The advent of smart homes, smart schools and smart cities, creating a world where yourtelevision knows when you have sat down, or where homework is shared with future
employers, and a car is designed to decide who to save — the driver or the pedestrian —at the moment of a malfunction, means that human beings and intelligent machines
will have to learn to coexist. But on whose terms? With virtual reality available in more
and more digital products and services, particularly in gaming,98 and with the metaverseon the techscape horizon, it is more important than ever to address questions ofagency, design and accountability.

“Putting people into virtual worlds can be incredibly
effective at changing their behaviour, and thosechanges can happen without the person’s awareness...
where virtual reality might go in the future could be sodestructive of a sense of truth, a sense of free will, thesense of the civil project. It could be really thedestruction of us all.”99
Jaron LanierIn this context, the oversight of persuasive design strategies that prime human beings
to behave in certain ways becomes an urgent ethical question for policy makers andcivil society.

The Global Virtual Reality in Gaming Market was valued at $7.5 billion in 2021 and is forecast to reach a value of $37
billion by 2028 (Source: Vantage Market Research)
99 The Times, ‘Social media is tearing society apart’ (15 November 2017)98

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Chapter Five
Seeds of change
The digital environment is entirely man and woman-made. Any, or all, of the persuasive
design strategies described in Chapter Three could be abandoned, recalibrated orredesigned to meet the needs of children and young people.
There is no single vision of the future of tech, but the ethical and social issues raised by
persuasive design will be magnified by emerging technologies and AI. This inevitable
amplification of impact has led to calls for more oversight. The New York Times
journalist and tech analyst, Farhad Manjoo, speaks for many when he says: “My default
position about whether this stuff [technology] is going to be good or bad in the world
has changed. So in the past, my reflexive bias of a new piece of technology tended
toward optimism… it’s going to make us more efficient or help us connect with people
and that has to be good… But I think we should all be more sceptical of the unseen andlonger-term potential dangers of these technologies before we rush to embracethem.”100
As the digital environment becomes integrated with the physical environment, users will
be automatically plugged in: not merely for extended use, but for permanent use. This
will create a de facto situation where users are guided through life along algorithmicallydetermined pathways acting in the best interests of whoever owns or pays to use theirdata.
The World Wide Web turns 35 next year. Few anticipated its rapid dominance ofeconomic and civic life — referred to as the Fourth Industrial Revolution.101 In the UK,
the last great industrial revolution of the 19th century saw 17 Factory Acts,102 and vast
swathes of further legislation on town planning, utilities, food safety and child labour, tobalance societal needs against the rise of the commercial instincts of a handful of ultrawealthy, industrial entrepreneurs. These acts included provisions that regulated thehours and welfare of children and young people.
The assets of the digital revolution are less visible and more mobile. Cables and servers
transport and store data across the globe blurring jurisdictional lines, making it harder
to pinpoint the exact whereabouts of a user’s personal data.
Whilst the multibillion-dollar market value of the most successful tech companies points
to data as the ‘gold’ of the digital revolution, each piece is hard to value. The lack ofclarity as to where data sits and how much it is worth makes it difficult to find, regulate
or tax.

NPR, ‘How 5 Tech Giants Have Become More Like Governments than Companies’, Terry Gross interviewing Farhad
Manjoo on Fresh Air (October 2017)
101 World Economic Forum, ‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution: At a Glance’ (April 2016)
102 Technical Education Matters, ‘The Factory Acts’ (16 February 2016)
100

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Whilst some continue to assert that these issues and the fast-moving nature of digital
innovation preclude effective regulation, there is an increasingly active number who
believe that the unfettered commercial freedoms singularly enjoyed by the tech industry
create a negative environment and that limits must be set, including limiting the impactof persuasive design strategies on the choices and outcomes of children and young
people.
Taking Action
The public school district in Seattle has filed a lawsuit against TikTok, Instagram,
Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat for “successfully exploited the vulnerable brains ofyouth, hooking tens of millions of students across the country into positive feedback
loops of excessive use."103 They claim these services are responsible for worsening
mental health and behavioural disorders including anxiety, depression, disorderedeating and cyberbullying; making it more difficult to educate students; and forcing
schools to take steps such as hiring additional mental health professionals, developing
lesson plans about the effects of social media, and providing additional training toteachers. Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Brent Jones said, "our obligation is tocreate the conditions for students to thrive and have high quality learning experiences…
the harm caused by these companies runs counter to that."
Similarly, an article published in the journal of legal analysis in 2021 called on the US
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to include dark pattern audits in their consent decree
process. It states “Many dark patterns appear to violate federal and state laws
restricting the use of unfair and deceptive practices in trade. Moreover, in thoseinstances where consumers enter into contracts after being exposed to dark patterns,
their consent could be deemed voidable under contract law principles.”104 The following
year, the FTC published a report showing the increased use of dark patters and theaction the FTC is taking against tactics designed to “trick and trap” consumers.105 In
March 2023, the FTC finalised an order requiring Epic Games to pay $245 million as
penalty for the use of dark patterns, tricking players into making unwitting purchases
and allowing children to make unauthorized charges without parental approval.106
Out of the darkness, into the light
Increasing awareness of persuasive design strategies and the effects they have not only
on young people but other vulnerable groups has led to a number of initiatives to bringdark patterns to light, and related calls for action from designers, policymakers andregulators. A group of experts from the Technology University of Dublin have developed
a framework for the detection of web-based dark patterns.107 Across the Atlantic, theDigital Civil Society Lab at Stanford hosts the ‘Dark Patterns Tipline’ – an initiative
started by a team of designers, researchers, legal experts and advocacy-minded
individuals to better understand how technology is exploiting people. Anyone can

The Guardian, ‘Seattle public schools sue social media platforms for youth mental health crisis’ *8 January 2023)
Jamie Luguru, Lior Jacob Strahilevitz, ‘Shining a Light on Dark Patterns’, Journal of Legal Analysis, Volume 13, Issue 1,
pp. 43–109 (2021)
105 Federal Trade Commission, ‘FTC Report shows rise in sophisticated dark patterns designed to trick and trap
consumers’ (September 2022)
106 Federal Trade Commission, ‘FTC Finalizes Order Requiring Fortnite maker Epic Games to Pay $245 Million for Tricking
Users into Making Unwanted Charges’ (March 2023)
107 A. Curley, D. O’Sullivan, D. Gordon, B. Tierney, I. Stavrakakis, ‘The Design of a Framework for the Detection of WebBased Dark Patterns’, ICDS 2021: The 15th International Conference on Digital Society (July 2021)
103
104

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44‘report’ a dark pattern. The Tip Line highlights examples from people’s lived experiences
to illustrate how dark patterns lead to everyday harms.108
The legal innovation studio Amurabi have created a holistic platform to fight against
dark patterns: identifying sites or apps that contain dark patterns, remedying dark
patterns with ‘fair patterns’, training stakeholders (designers, developers, digitalmarketers) and raising awareness among the public.
Their set of on-shelf ‘fair patterns’ are the result of their R&D Lab, and combine
neurosciences, UX design, plain language and the Competition & Markets
Authority’s principle of ‘fairness by design’. The goal is not ‘just’ to create theopposite of dark patterns, but to ‘equip’ users with the necessary knowledge toregain their autonomy online, and make informed and meaningful choices.
At the time of writing, some specific fair patterns are being developed for minors(e.g. protective defaults, smaller doses of information, references to concepts thatkids and teens can easily grasp etc), shown below:109

The Dark Patterns Tipline
Potel-Saville, Talbourdet, ‘Empowering children to understand and exercise their personal data rights’, Legal Design
Perspectives, Ledizioni (2021)
108
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Notably, these initiatives are driven largely by not-for-profit groups and academic
institutions, rather than the tech sector itself, or indeed regulators. It is now time forpolicymakers around the world to encode this work into regulatory frameworks, andaccelerate progress to not only bring dark patterns to light, but to bring them to heel.

Conclusion
As the implications of a ‘digital-first’ world become clearer, and the conflicts between
Big Tech’s commercial imperative and society’s established norms are exposed,
governments across the world have begun to consider how to apply existing legal
principles to the online world, and adapt, enhance and add to legislation to tackle
harms, business practices and impacts specific to the digital environment.
The ubiquitous use of persuasive design strategies in the digital environment is an
issue that affects almost all children. Whilst the digital environment tantalisingly
embodies both progress and the promise of creativity and knowledge, its current
dependence on persuasive technology makes it a toxic environment for children andyoung people that limits opportunity and creativity.

“Our ability to live the lives we want to live… throughtechnology is a design problem, not just a personal
responsibility problem”110
Tristan HarrisChildren are vulnerable to mental health issues associated with identity development,
familial and social pressure. The digital norms relating to extended use amplify thesepressures and therefore their vulnerability. It is imperative that for children to engage
purposefully and playfully online, the digital environment must be designed with theirneeds and rights in mind.

110

Tristan Harris, ‘Tech companies design your life, here’s why you should care’, (March 2017)

DISRUPTED CHILDHOOD – The Cost of Persuasive Design

46“The power to design user behaviour ought to come witha standard of ethical limitations.”111
Nir Eyal

The current asymmetry of power between the developing child and the most powerfulcompanies in the world is not in the ‘best interests’ of the child. 5Rights Foundation
wishes to see a global effort to set the ethics, governance and legal boundaries for
global technology companies and those that use technology to engage with children.
This issue is bigger than any single nation state, bigger than a single company, andbigger than any single voice.
All stakeholders have a duty to define and adhere to ethical design standards to deliverage-appropriate experiences to children.

111

Nir Eyal, ‘Want to design user behaviour? Pass the ‘Regret Test’ first’, Nir Eyal (2018)