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2573-0142/2021/10-ART471

https://doi.org/10.1145/3479858

471

Child Safety in the Smart Home: Parents’ Perceptions, Needs,

and Mitigation Strategies

KAIWEN SUN, School of Information, University of Michigan, USA

YIXIN ZOU, School of Information, University of Michigan, USA

JENNY RADESKY, Department of Pediatrics, University of Michigan Medical School, USA

CHRISTOPHER BROOKS, School of Information, University of Michigan, USA

FLORIAN SCHAUB, School of Information, University of Michigan, USA

Concerns about child physical and digital safety are emerging with families’ adoption of smart home technologies such as robot vacuums and smart speakers. To better understand parents’ defnitions and perceptions of

child safety regarding smart home technologies, we interviewed 23 parents who are smart home adopters. We

contribute insights into parents’ perceptions of the physical and digital safety risks smart home technologies

pose to children, and how such perceptions formed and changed across three phases. In acquiring smart home

devices, parents already considered whether the device could cause physical harm to their children or pose

privacy and security risks. Once children become active users of smart home technologies, parents however

reported encountering unanticipated physical safety risks and digital safety issues (e.g., exposure to unsuitable

content) that required their mitigation strategies. As their children grow up, parents further expressed the need

to shift attention from physical safety to digital safety. Parents’ safety perceptions infuence how they involve

children in smart home interactions and implement mitigation strategies, such as restricting access to certain

devices and using parental controls. We identify six factors that shape parents’ perception and evaluation of

smart home safety risks to children, including parenting style, parents’ tech-savviness, parents’ trust in tech

companies, children’s age and developmental diferences, news media, and device characteristics. We provide

design and policy recommendations to better protect children’s safety in the smart home environment.

CCS Concepts: • Security and privacy → Social aspects of security and privacy; Usability in security and

privacy; • Human-centered computing → Ubiquitous and mobile devices; • Social and professional

topics → Children.

Additional Key Words and Phrases: Smart home technologies; child safety; parenting; child-centered design.

ACM Reference Format:

Kaiwen Sun, Yixin Zou, Jenny Radesky, Christopher Brooks, and Florian Schaub. 2021. Child Safety in the

Smart Home: Parents’ Perceptions, Needs, and Mitigation Strategies. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 5,

CSCW2, Article 471 (October 2021), 41 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3479858

1 INTRODUCTION

Children are sensitive to and dependent upon their care-giving environments. In particular, creating

a nurturing and safe home environment is critical to children’s family life experiences [17]. Many

Authors’ addresses: Kaiwen Sun, kwsun@umich.edu, School of Information, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI,

USA; Yixin Zou, yixinz@umich.edu, School of Information, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA; Jenny Radesky,

jradesky@umich.edu, Department of Pediatrics, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, MI, USA; Christopher

Brooks, brooksch@umich.edu, School of Information, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA; Florian Schaub,

fschaub@umich.edu, School of Information, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License. 

© 2021 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). 

2573-0142/2021/10-ART471. https://doi.org/10.1145/3479858 

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471:2 Kaiwen Sun et al.

parents have adopted smart home technologies — sensors, interfaces, appliances, and devices to

enable home automation through localized and/or remote control [16] — for the purposes of security,

convenience, or energy saving [1, 47, 70]. As a result, many children grow up in home environments

flled with smart home technologies, ranging from smart speakers, smart locks to robot vacuums,

that are designed by adults and usually for adults. Past research has surfaced issues of usability [9],

privacy [37, 58], and security [61, 109] in various use cases of smart homes involving children.

Meanwhile, child physical safety is a signifcant focus of parenting young children as unintended

injuries are a leading cause of child morbidity [44] and mortality [81]. While prior research demonstrates the importance of ensuring physical safety in the home environment [44, 81], child physical

safety risks have not been studied in depth with regard to smart home technologies. Anecdotal

evidence suggests that parents are concerned about the possibility that a vacuum cleaning robot

could run over young children’s toes [90], or battery compartments of a smart button might pose

choking hazards [91]. Such anecdotes indicate that certain smart home technologies could pose

physical safety risks given that they are physical objects situated in the home environment, often in

close contact with children. Meanwhile, the Internet-connected nature of smart home technologies

indicates potential digital safety risks to children, and little is known about how parents might

perceive and deal with these physical versus digital safety risks diferently.

Our research provides a deeper understanding of how parents conceptualize the physical and

digital safety risks in children’s interactions with smart home technologies and their corresponding

mitigation strategies. Specifcally, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 23 parents who

are adopters of various smart home technologies with children from young toddlers to preteens

(1-11). We aimed for a wide range for children’s age to ensure we get diverse perspectives of

how children interact with smart home technologies. Our study addresses the following research

questions:

(1) What are parents’ perceptions of children’s safety in the context of smart home technologies,

and what factors shape such perceptions?

(2) What approaches and strategies, if any, do parents adopt to mitigate perceived child-safety

risks?

We fnd that parents’ perceptions of smart home safety risks included both physical and digital

aspects and evolved in three phases. When deciding to purchase smart home technologies (phase 1),

most parents consider whether certain technologies might pose obvious physical safety, privacy, or

security risks for their children. As their children became active users of the acquired smart home

technologies (phase 2), parents discovered safety risks they had not considered and re-evaluated

children’s use cases, such as how children’s improper use of the technology may lead to physically

unsafe situations and how children might be exposed to unsuitable digital content. Parents discussed

the need for further adjustment as their children grow up (phase 3), with an increased focus on

digital safety risks.

As their perceptions and safety concerns changed across the three phases, parents discussed

making reactive decisions based on children’s smart home experiences to protect children’s physical

and digital safety. For instance, parents became selective of the smart home technologies children

are allowed to access, adjusted commands and controls children could use, or leveraged parental

control features if available.

We identify multiple factors that infuence parents’ perceptions and mitigation strategies toward

smart home safety risks to children, including parenting style, parents’ tech-savviness, parents’

trust in tech companies, children’s age and developmental diferences, news media, and device

characteristics. We discuss how our fndings relate to and build on existing literature, as well as

implications for design and public policy to better support children’s safety in smart homes.

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Child Safety in the Smart Home 471:3

2 RELATED WORK

We review existing work on child safety issues in the physical and digital world, parents’ role in

mitigating child safety risks, and the adoption of smart home devices.

2.1 Children’s Safety in the Physical and Digital World

Prior research suggests that safety is an intersubjective concept subject to social construction,

collective agreement, and socialization [110]. Although objective danger exists, children develop

safety awareness through observing caregivers’ cues and responses [83, 92, 94]. While the home

environment helps children develop a sense of safety and security [80], unintentional injuries often

happen to children at home.

Many factors contribute to child home safety risks. Children have immature cognition and are

unaware of or tend to ignore danger [87]. Children’s age and compliance to home safety rules also

determine their likelihood of getting into accidents: those who are younger or ignorant of safety

rules are more likely to get injured [23, 66]. As for parents, lower educational and socio-economic

backgrounds have been shown to increase safety risks for children [59, 65]. Parents’ attitudes and

behaviors toward home safety such as beliefs in fate, tolerance to risk, and training in children’s

safety practices are considered relevant to home accident prevention [48, 62, 63]. As for the home

environment, a physical setup with lots of noise, disorder, and easy access to hazards increases

children’s risk of injuries [59, 65, 67, 73]. When it comes to the digital world, prior research suggests

that young children (5–8 years of age) have minimal understanding of technical and social aspects

of the Internet or its risks [104, 105]. Parents’ concerns about children’s use of the Internet center

on privacy invasions [57], cyberbullying [54], addiction [50], and explicit content [31, 54].

Regarding smart home devices, past research has primarily focused on privacy and security

issues that could expose families’ sensitive information [45, 71], usability issues that diminish user

experiences [7, 102], and the lack of granular privacy controls that could cause tensions among

multiple users [89, 99, 108]. More specifc to children, Internet-connected toys such as My Friend

Cayla raise privacy concerns for parents [61] as these toys introduce opportunities for malicious

attacks (e.g., hacking the toy to operate a smart lock using voice commands) [24, 68]. Another

example is smart security cameras installed in children’s bedrooms, which could be hacked to spy

on, scare, or harass children [93].

Nonetheless, little research has examined safety risks of smart home technologies in households

involving children. Smart home technologies — by residing in the home space while serving as

portals to the Internet and bridges amongst diferent devices — could amplify existing safety risks

and introduce new risks to children. Our study investigates how parents perceive and react to

smart home safety risks to children, and in particular, whether parents associate smart home safety

risks with other child safety risks in the physical and digital world.

2.2 Parents’ Role in Children’s Physical and Digital Safety

Parents play a signifcant role in managing risks for children by baby proofng the home environment [25, 44], supervising children [65], and teaching children about risky situations and how

to avoid hazards in the physical world [72]. Gärling and Gärling [35] found that parents attempt

to manage children’s injury risks by teaching them how to behave safely by the time children

reach three years of age. Common teaching strategies include explanations, establishing rules, and

modifying behaviors through rewards or punishment [63]. Parenting style also infuences how

parents teach children home safety rules and how efectively the rules reduce children’s injury

risks. For instance, permissive parents who impose less control on their children tend to explain,

rather than command, rules about home safety [63]. Such a parenting style might increase young

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471:4 Kaiwen Sun et al.

children’s safety risks due to a lack of clear rules on what behaviors are acceptable [63] and a lack

of opportunities for children to internalize behaviors that need self-regulation [60].

Past research has also examined parents’ strategies to minimize their children’s online risks

in the digital world. The EU Kids Online network [54] identifed common approaches used by

parents, including active mediation of Internet use and Internet safety (e.g., discussing online

activities and safety practices with children), restrictive mediation (e.g., setting rules for Internet

use); monitoring Internet use; and technical mediation (e.g., using parental controls to constrain

use). Among these strategies, studies have found that parents with more advanced digital skills

tend to use active mediation, whereas parents with lower digital skills tend to use more restrictive

mediation strategies or implement technical restrictions [54, 69]. Our study examined parents’

strategies to mitigate perceived safety risks when children use smart home technologies — which

pose a hybrid of physical and digital child safety risks by physically being in the home environment

while also being connected to the digital world.

2.3 Smart Home Device Adoption and Evaluation

Consumers’ purchasing experience consists of pre-purchase evaluation, purchase, consumption,

and post-consumption evaluation [11]. Karapanos et al. [41] highlighted the temporality of user

experience, i.e., how the quality of user experience develops from short-term pleasures in early

stages to refections on the product’s infuence in prolonged use. Their framework identifes

consumers’ adoption, acceptance, and evaluation of products as phases of a refective process [41].

Regarding user interactions with smart home systems, Jakobi et al. [38] identifed a four-phase

process from system setup, confguration, daily use, to reconfguration and extension.

Throughout diferent phases, consumers’ evaluations of digital products are infuenced by

numerous factors [41]. Lau et al. [51] found that during pre-purchase evaluation, convenience and

a mindset of wanting to stay current with technology were two primary motivators for adopting

smart speakers; price, brand, and compatibility were secondary. Privacy, security, and trust in

brands and companies were also key infuencers on people’s willingness to adopt smart home

devices [6, 51]. Powers et al. [74] found that social media news afected people’s purchase behaviors

around consumer goods such as electronics and groceries. The purchase decision further depends

on the user’s identities or preferences: energy-sensitive users look for smart home products with

energy saving features [19, 53], tech enthusiasts value devices that enhance home control and

automation lifestyle [16, 70], and parents value devices that support family use [22].

In the post-consumption phase, consumers evaluate their experiences while refecting on their

original considerations toward the product, and such refection afects their overall satisfaction [4].

Emami-Naeini et al. [28] found that many participants in their study did not consider privacy and

security as a determining factor before purchasing smart home devices, but came to realize privacy

and security issues later on through using the device, news reports, and peer infuences. Multiple

users sharing the same smart home device may pose issues for access-control mechanisms [33, 88,

109] and negatively impact the post-consumption experience [106–108]. For instance, Choe et al.

[14] uncovered tensions among household members due to diferent comfort levels with in-home

sensors.

To the best of our knowledge, our study is among the frst to examine parents’ consideration

of children’s safety across the pre-and post-purchase phases of smart home technologies. Our

study contributes insights on how parents factor child safety into their evaluation of smart home

technologies. Specifcally, we fnd that parents focused on physical safety, privacy, and security

aspects in purchasing the device, identifed additional safety issues such as exposure to unsuitable

content during children’s use, and paid increasing attention to digital safety as children grow up.

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Child Safety in the Smart Home 471:5

3 METHODS

To explore how parents perceive child safety in smart homes and how parents mitigate perceived

safety risks, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 23 parents who (1) are owners and users

of smart home technologies (e.g., smart speakers, smart security cameras, and smart doorbells) and

(2) have children in the age range of 1–11 years who had experiences using smart home technologies.

We decided to interview only parents, not children, as parents are usually adopters and pilot users

of smart home technologies [33, 46] who are in control of their children’s experiences. Most

participants owned a variety of smart home devices, so they might have an enriched experience

with smart home technologies and more awareness of diferent device-specifc safety aspects than

the general public. We recruited parents with children from young toddlers to preteens to explore

if parents’ perception of safety issues depends on children’s age.

While we initially planned to conduct in-home interviews with parents to contextualize their

smart home device placements and interactions, the COVID-19 pandemic made us opt for virtual

visits instead. When piloting virtual visits, we asked the interviewee for a virtual tour as they held

the camera to show us around their places while pointing out specifc smart home technologies.

However, these virtual tours turned out to be distracting and technically challenging to stay

connected while providing little additional insight over the interview component. As a result, we

decided to conduct remote interviews without virtual tours, accepting the drawback that we would

have to rely on participants’ self-reports without being able to see their home environment. Remote

interviews however allowed us to recruit a geographically diverse sample across the US and Canada.

We conducted our interviews from June to August 2020 through video calls with parents across

the United States (US) and Canada (CA). Our study was deemed exempt from oversight by our

university’s Institutional Review Board (IRB).

3.1 Interview Protocol

Our interview protocol consisted of three parts: (1) smart home use and parents’ mental models

of smart home safety, (2) parents’ perception of their children’s smart home use and interactions

in relation to safety, and (3) potential issues regarding children’s use of smart home technologies

and corresponding mitigation strategies from parents. We sequenced the interview questions in

ways that create opportunities for parents to bring up safety issues on their own before we asked

explicitly about safety and other specifc concerns. The full interview protocol is provided in

Appendix A. Since the interviews were semi-structured, we sometimes skipped questions listed in

the protocol if parents had already answered them in a previous question or in their comments

during the course of the interview.

In Part 1, we invited parents to describe both theirs and their children’s smart home technology

ownership, placement, and use. We then indirectly elicited parents’ perceptions ofsmart home safety

by asking about factors they considered before purchasing smart home technologies, whether they

considered children’s use in making purchase decisions, and what impacts smart home technologies

could have on their children in their opinion. By doing this, we hoped to understand whether

parents would intuitively bring up safety-related topics in discussing their children’s use of smart

home technologies. If parents mentioned safety-related considerations, we asked them to discuss

specifc safety concerns to gauge parents’ perception of smart home safety risks.

In Part 2, we tried to further contextualize how parents perceived their children’s smart home

use and interactions. We asked about children’s access to and control of smart home technologies,

whether parents allow or limit children’s access to certain smart home technologies and why. To

learn about children’s awareness of potential smart home safety risks from parents’ perspectives,

we asked parents if they felt comfortable leaving their children alone to operate smart home

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471:6 Kaiwen Sun et al.

technologies, and if there was anything they disliked or were concerned about regarding their

children’s interactions with smart home technologies. If parents had not brought up safety-related

topics by this point, we asked more directly about what they considered safe or unsafe regarding

smart home devices, and which devices were safe or unsafe for their children in their opinion. We

deliberately did not defne ‘safety’ to elicit parents’ own interpretations of what safety means in

smart home contexts.

In Part 3, we asked parents whether their children have showed any concerns, challenges,

or issues when interacting with smart home technologies, whether there were disagreements

between parents and children in using the technology, and how parents mitigate issues related

to safety. Because parental rules are a critical factor related to children’s injury risks [66, 67], we

asked whether and what rules parents established for their children’s interaction with smart home

technologies and how children reacted to these rules. We concluded the interview by asking parents

if they had any suggestions regarding safer smart home technologies for children, such as desired

features and functionalities.

ID Ctry. Child Age TV Speaker Thermo. Camera Light Switch Lock Door Doorbell Vacuum Baby Monitor

P1 CA 18m, 4y • ◦ • ◦ •

P2 US 9y, 12y • • •

P3 US 9y, 11y • • ◦ • ◦ • • • • ◦

P4 US 9y, 11y • • ◦ ◦ • ◦ • •

P5 US 5y, 7y • • ◦ ◦ • • ◦ ◦

P6 US 7y • • ◦ • ◦

P7 US 7y, 8.5y • ◦ ◦ • • • ◦

P8 US 2y ◦ • ◦ ◦ • ◦ ◦ • ◦

P9 US 7y, 9y • • ◦ • • • ◦

P10 US 8y, 9y • • ◦ • •

P11 US 5y, 7y • • ◦ • • •

P12 US 2y, 5y, 8y, 10y • • ◦ • • • • •

P13 US 4y • • • ◦ • • • ◦ • ◦

P14 CA 2y, 4y • • ◦ ◦ • ◦ ◦ ◦

P15 CA 8y, 8y • • ◦ ◦ • •

P16 US 2y, 6y ◦ • ◦ ◦ • ◦

P17 US 3y, 6y • • ◦ ◦ • • •

P18 CA 2y, 4y, 7y • • ◦ • • ◦ •

P19 CA 5y • • ◦ • ◦ •

P20 US 9y • • ◦ ◦ • • • ◦

P21 US 2m, 8y, 10y • • • ◦ • •

P22 US 7m, 5y, 7y • • • • • • • • ◦

P23 US 2y, 5y, 7y • • ◦ ◦ • • ◦ • •

Table 1. Participant Demographics with Smart Home Devices (•: smart home device used by children; ◦:

smart home device used by parents but not children).

3.2 Participant Recruitment and Demographics

We recruited prospective participants through postings on Reddit, Craigslist and convenience

sampling. We decided to use Reddit as the main recruitment platform since (1) Reddit provides

a concentrated place to reach a regionally diverse sample [13], and (2) Reddit hosts several large

parenting communities where parents can ask questions anonymously [2, 3]. With permissions

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471:8 Kaiwen Sun et al.

Fig. 1. A diagram of parents’ perceptions of and approaches to children’s smart home safety in relation to

the factors (SHT = Smart Home Technologies).

how children conceptualize smart home safety, as well as how children and parents interact with

and through smart home technologies using observations to provide further insights and reveal

potential tensions between children’s and parents’ perspectives.

4 FINDINGS

Overall, we found that parents considered both physical and digital child safety risks with regard

to smart home technologies. We identifed three phases over which parents’ perceptions of these

safety risks evolved (see Figure 1). The evolving safety risk perceptions further infuenced parents’

decisions and mitigation strategies regarding their children and smart home technologies. Before

purchasing or acquiring smart home technologies (phase 1), parents primarily focused on avoiding

devices that could cause physical harm to children or had obvious privacy and security risks. As

children started to use smart home technologies (phase 2), parents reactively re-evaluated safety

risks after observing their children’s usage patterns and became aware of how devices could expose

children to unsuitable content or lead to physically unsafe situations. Parents discussed the evolving

safety needs as children grow up (phase 3), and they became more worried about children’s digital

safety in smart homes. Accordingly, parents’ mitigation strategies against perceived safety risks

difered in the three phases, from avoiding purchasing certain smart home technologies (phase

1), being selective in children’s access to devices and enforcing safety use guidelines (phase 2),

to planning on educating their children about digital safety risks (phase 3). We next discuss our

fndings for each phase in more detail (Section 4.1 to 4.3) before summarizing six factors we

identifed that infuence parents’ considerations around smart home child safety (Section 4.4). To

enhance children’s safety and overall user experiences in smart homes, parents further suggested

improvements in parental controls design and desired more transparency and accountability from

tech companies (Section 4.5).

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Child Safety in the Smart Home 471:9

4.1 Phase One: Safety Considerations Before Device Acquisition

When considering the purchase of smart home devices, most parents reported being vigilant

about children’s smart home safety as they discussed initial safety concerns toward certain smart

home technologies and associated risks. Parents stated that they would avoid certain smart home

technologies that appeared to pose privacy and security risks for their family, might create physical

harms to children, were branded by distrusted companies, or did not seem suitable for their

children’s age.

4.1.1 Privacy and security concerns. Most parents recognized that children’s smart home safety is

closely linked to privacy and security. Parents identifed privacy and security risks from certain

cloud-based devices such as security cameras, smart locks, and smart speakers. To mitigate these

risks, parents either ruled out purchasing such devices, or put a lot of thought into choosing the

device’s brand and properly incorporating the device into their smart home systems.

Concerns over cloud-based security cameras. Most parents who expressed concerns about cloudbased security cameras mentioned the possibility of cameras being hacked and exposing their

children to strangers’ surveillance or contact; this was possibly due to some highly publicized

cases before we conducted the interview [93]. Prior work suggests that users’ distrust in tech

companies and disbelief that their data would be handled properly hinder smart home device

adoption [51, 103]. Similarly, we found that a few parents avoided certain security camera brands

due to negative news reports. For instance, P13 said they deliberately decided not to use Motorola

baby monitors because they had heard “horror stories” about the product getting hacked. Both P9

and P10 mentioned avoiding the Ring camera due to privacy issues and security breaches they had

heard about the product. P6 noted a general skepticism toward any Internet-connected cameras:

“ I don’t like the idea of any camera that is accessible by any network in my home . . .They

can see you and your home, and someone can activate that without knowing it. I just

feel like it’s very insecure, and . . . the [news] came out about all those cameras that were

getting hacked. People were saying and doing terrible things through them. That was

. . . another brick in the wall convincing me to have absolutely no cameras.”

P14 chose to have a security camera that was disconnected from the Internet and intentionally

avoided putting it in the child’s room. The action originated from what they learned from the news

and their distrust in certain tech companies:

“If I don’t trust that I have control of that thing, that would be the biggest red fag for me

. . .I am not as comfortable with [the camera] given . . . all the current news and questions

about the tech companies and access to data. The camera that I do have is inside the

house . . . The video is stored on a hard drive and I have access to it from there . . .I don’t

necessarily want anyone else looking at my kids while they’re sleeping.”

Concerns over smart locks. Some parents were skeptical about smart locks, mostly because they

envisioned serious physical consequences if the smart lock was compromised. P10 shared that the

locks in their home were all manual, as they were concerned that a smart lock could malfunction

and unlock itself.

P11 explained why they specifcally decided to get a Bluetooth-based smart lock:

“I’m not thrilled with the security implications of connecting the door lock to the Internet.

If it’s on Bluetooth only, then there’s kind of ‘less can go wrong’ from a security perspective

. . . [Considering that] anyone on the planet can open my front door [if I had an Internetconnected lock] . . .I wanted to keep it of the Internet.”

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471:10 Kaiwen Sun et al.

Tolerance of smart speakers’ privacy risks. Nearly all parents had at least one smart speaker in

their household. Most parents appeared to be aware of privacy risks associated with smart speakers

but expressed tolerance to such risks. P22 shared:

“Most of the privacy [issues] that I would be worried about has to do with the speakers.

You can obviously take user data for advertising through it, but even then, I don’t think it

puts anybody in jeopardy or anybody at risk.”

However, P1, a software developer with technical knowledge of Internet-connected devices’

vulnerabilities, expressed stronger concerns and considered smart speakers unsafe for their children:

“What’s coming to my mind is . . .smart [speakers with] videos, and especially devices that

can make calls . . .It concerns me that my kids might communicate with somebody that I

am unaware of . . .I don’t want random people to be able to call the device, and I don’t

want my children to be able to call random people . . .I want to basically moderate who

can and can’t communicate with the device and by proxy my child.”

4.1.2 Device characteristics posing physical threats. In discussing factors they considered before

purchasing smart home technologies for children’s use, some parents mentioned physical safety

concerns triggered by certain device characteristics. Several parents mentioned deliberately staying

away from smart devices with motors (which produce heat) or lack product certifcations (e.g.,

CE [96] or UL [98] certifcation). Parents viewed these features as potential physical safety threats

and associated them with traditional home safety issues such as burns and injuries. P1 explained

their concerns about smart technologies with heating functions:

“[I would not even consider] a smart heater . . . You’d be insane to build a smart heater,

that’s a great way to have somebody burn their house down and sue [the manufacturer]

into oblivion . . . There [aren’t] any physical things with motors or things with heaters [in

our house].”

P7 identifed UL certifcation as a key indicator of a physically safe smart home device:

“Anything that needs to plug into main power absolutely has to be UL certifed. End of

story. Because then at least there’s a basic understanding that it’s probably been tested

and it’s probably not going to explode in the middle of the night.”

Overall, in phase 1 parents formed basic safety requirements for smart home technologies and

considered them in the purchase decisions, such as minimal privacy and security risks and no

potential for physical harm.

4.2 Phase Two: Safety Reflections and Re-evaluations During Use

Karapanos et al. [41] highlighted that users’ evaluation of digital products is an ongoing and

refective process throughout adoption and use. Similarly, we observed that although parents

considered certain safety risks before purchasing smart home devices, they later realized additional

safety risks once their children started interacting with the device. Most parents mentioned that

their children were unaware of or unable to fully understand smart home related safety risks. Thus,

keeping children safe required constant efort and various strategies, such as child-proofng the

smart home environment, limiting children’s access to certain smart home devices, and establishing

rules for safe use.

4.2.1 Safety issues in children’s smart home use. Many parents described that their children had

not yet developed awareness of smart home related safety risks due to children’s young age and

limited access or use. As parents described their children’s smart home use, some shared physical

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Child Safety in the Smart Home 471:11

safety incidents, some foresaw digital safety issues, and others worried about safety risks as a result

of children’s improper handling of the device.

Children’s limited smart home safety risk perceptions. While parents strove to provide a safe

smart home environment for their children, many said their children did not seem to be aware of

safety risks associated with smart home technologies. Other parents did not think conversations

about safety were necessary, as their children’s smart home use had been supervised and limited to

non-critical devices (e.g., smart lights) or devices disconnected from the Internet. As P16 discussed:

“I don’t think [my kid] cares about bad actors on the Internet in terms of accessing

things and compromised systems that go beyond her . . .Our kids always have close adult

supervision, whether it’s my wife or our nanny.”

Some parents mentioned their children were aware of online safety risks, which may or may not

apply to smart home contexts. P15 thought that their children understood the basic meaning of

hacking but not in the context of smart home devices such as cameras being hacked. Similarly, P11

said their child understood that there are “bad people online” but not what risks might be:

“He probably has . . . a real fedgling awareness of ‘there are other people online and they’re

not always friends’ . . .I don’t think [children] have any real concern about the scary stuf

[such as news of smart home devices being compromised] that we read about.”

P13 considered it unsuitable to teach their four-year-old about smart home safety risks, which

might scare the child as he was just starting to develop an understanding of the digital world:

“I don’t think [the conversation] would help at this point . . .I think it would actively hurt

him. He’s four, he likes to watch cartoons, he’s starting to have vivid dreams . . . and I don’t

necessarily want him thinking that his house, which is his safe area, could potentially

turn against him.”

A few parents, usually with slightly older children, mentioned having conversations about smart

home safety with their children but did not think that their children had an in-depth understanding.

P12 said their children were taught to stop the smart speaker right away if it started “playing

music that sounds inappropriate.” P2 mentioned that their nine- and twelve-year-olds knew the

smart lock’s passcode and understood that they were “not allowed to give out the code,” but P2 also

suspected that the children probably just treated it as a key without knowing much about related

safety issues. Having experienced identity theft, P20 taught their nine-year-old the importance of

protecting personal information online:

“We told him about [the identity theft experience] and he knew how stressful that was

. . .We got it all resolved, but it took a lot of work to resolve . . .He saw how stressful that was

. . . So I think he understands the importance of protecting [his] identity and information.”

Physical safety incidents. Multiple parents of young children shared physical safety incidents

that involved smart robot vacuums. P14 described:

“[The smart vacuum] was breaking. I had to get a replacement part to get it to detect

people again . . .I started the vacuum cleaner and walked away from it . . . and it ran over

her toes. It’s not that heavy. It was just sort of an annoyance for her.”

P8 shared that “the [vacuum] robot scared the dog, and the dog ran right past my son and spun him

around.” Similarly, P12 mentioned that the smart vacuum could cause “chain reactions” that would

pose safety hazards, such as by getting “tangled in some wires and knocked stuf of the table” which

could accidentally hurt their children.

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471:12 Kaiwen Sun et al.

Children’s exposure to inappropriate content. Compared to physical safety concerns with smart

robot vacuums, smart speakers raised diferent safety concerns. Many parents reported that their

children used smart speakers to ask questions, watch videos, or control other smart home devices

such as lights and doorbells. Some parents worried about smart speakers exposing children to

unsafe content. Such risk might originate from young children’s struggles with pronouncing or

spelling words correctly when asking questions. As P11 described:

“With a smart speaker, you can ask it all kinds of questions and maybe if you mispronounce

something, you get something else that’s more adult . . .I have seen the video where some

kid asks and ends up getting sex toys . . . They could end up shopping for something like

that by accident.”

Parents with older children were concerned about their children deliberately using smartspeakers

to access inappropriate content. P4 said:

“Sometimes [children] have this friend come over and he likes to try to get Alexa to play

the music that I wouldn’t let them listen to because the lyrics are unsafe . . . the content is

[unsafe].”

Furthermore, children could run into undesired experiences when the smart speaker is shared

by multiple family members. P18 mentioned that their child accidentally came across childinappropriate content in this way:

“[The smart speaker] will continue to play the last thing that was playing . . . So I’d be

listening to something that has grizzly details and really not kid appropriate . . .Our seven

year old [accidentally resumed it] and he would immediately tell it to stop and run away

because he’s very scared of being scared.”

P23 pointed out that such safety risks were not unique to children’s use of smart speakers, “but

[smart speakers] maybe create more opportunities [for children to be exposed to inappropriate content].”

Specifcally, the voice interaction with centrally-placed devices brings potentially inappropriate

information closer to the child than when it can only be accessed via computers, phones, or tablets

that can be removed from children’s reach.

Potential safety risks from children’s device use. Many parents said their children could use the

smart speaker to control other smart home devices (e.g., lights) and automation (e.g., dinner mode)

through voice commands or through the speaker’s display interface. With such access, some parents

worried that children’s accidental misuse or mischief could create safety issues. P20 gave their

nine-year-old full access to the smart home controls because they wanted the child to be part of the

smart home experience. Nonetheless, P20 was frustrated by Google Home lacking “the ability to

limit the devices that [the child] has control over.” For instance, P20 had a smart water heater linked

to the Google Home. To P20’s knowledge, there was no way to prevent the child from accessing the

water heater while still keeping the access to other less dangerous devices — this situation raised

concerns that the child might use voice commands to activate the smart water heater:

“I don’t want him controlling [the smart water heater] . . .He could burn himself, he could

burn us . . . Let’s say I’m in the shower and he tells the system to raise the temperature to

150 degrees . . .That’s why I would prefer to be able to just block his access from something

like that [but I can’t].”

Several parents further raised concerns about the safety implications of automated garage doors

that could be controlled via smart speakers. P20 worried that their child, with full control access to

the smart home system, might leave the garage door open, which could put the child at risk if left

home alone. P16 described that their children were too young to understand that the garage door

was not something to play with:

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Child Safety in the Smart Home 471:13

“I wouldn’t want my kids to be silly and say, ‘Alexa open the garage door’ . . .Kids don’t

have a fully developed prefrontal cortex to . . . know [they] shouldn’t play with the garage

door . . .[They would] basically make it a game where [their] little brother runs underneath

it as they close it.”

4.2.2 Parents’ mitigation strategies. Parents shared various preventative and reactive mitigation

strategies in response to safety concerns: conventional child proofng techniques, keeping young

children under close supervision when they interacted with smart home devices, limiting what

devices children had access to, and using devices’ built-in parental control features if available.

Conventional child-proofng. Nearly all parents who child-proofed smart home devices when their

children were younger mentioned common child-proofng approaches to prevent physical safety

risks. For instance, P12 shared that their children loved to press a button on a smart switch that

controlled lamps, so they “put a physical barrier up” to prevent children’s access. Several parents

mentioned they would keep devices out of their children’s reach. Specifcally, P8 mentioned that

they were afraid that some smart devices could be pushed over and fall on the child. P6 kept smart

buttons away from their seven-year-old so the child could not knock the buttons of, which then

might pose chocking hazards to the pets. P14 and P22 mentioned eforts to manage device cables,

such as ensuring that “the chords are all hidden” and “wrapped up” so that their children were less

likely to accidentally grab the cable and be hit on the head by a falling device. P12 described trying

to keep smart speakers out of their youngest one’s reach, while acknowledging that such attempts

were not always successful:

“He presses all the buttons on [the smart speaker] and somehow turns it into like setup

mode or turns [the volume] up . . . So we try to keep it out of his reach, but sometimes he

climbs to get to things, or he’ll pull it down. But we do keep it out of his reach.”

Being selective of children’s access to certain devices or functionalities. Zeng and Roesner [109]

found that while parents wanted to encourage children’s participation in the smart home experiences, they used parental control features to keep their children from causing trouble. We similarly

found that parents in our study used additional strategies to limit their children’s access to smart

home devices or functionalities. Some parents would not register their children’s voice with the

smart speaker so that the children could not control safety-critical devices such as garage doors

and security systems. For instance, P14 described that they opted for “behind-the-scenes” voice

control restrictions to make the home environment safe instead of explicitly telling children what

to do and what not to do:

“They can’t unlock the door [via voice control]. They can’t look at the doorbell. They can’t

call anyone [via the smart speaker], unless their voices are recognized as . . . an approved

user, which they’re not . . .I prefer to go with making the system ft them rather than

changing their behavior or setting rules in place for them to ft the system.”

Similarly, P23 registered their children’s voice to lock the door but did not give the children

the code to unlock it. P7 shared that the tablets their children used for watching videos were not

integrated into the smart home system, and did not have apps to control other smart home devices.

Safety by obscurity. Several parents mentioned that unless the smart home controls were directly

linked to children’s activities or experiences, they chose not to tell children how certain controls

work, e.g., for thermostats and lights in other family members’ room. However, these parents

indicated that their children could technically tap on the smart speaker display and use the central

app (e.g., Google Home app) to control other smart home devices, because the central app did not

allow selective device controls for diferent users. Due to this limitation, parents developed a “safety

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471:14 Kaiwen Sun et al.

by obscurity” mindset and tried to avoid safety issues through intentional non-disclosure. As P20

explained:

“If [the kid] knew he could control [the thermostats] . . .there’s no way to prevent him from

doing it. So I just haven’t told him about that stuf . . . and [other] kinds of things that I

wouldn’t want him to be able to play with . . .like the garage door [and other] security

related items.”

Children’s age also factored into parents’ decision to limit access. P17, with a three- and a

six-year-old, said limiting the young children’s access to the thermostat was necessary:

“They’re too young at this point to have access to those sorts of things because of the

friction . . .I don’t want them to make my AC cost rise . . .I do think it’s a little bit more

complex and nuanced. It would just take a lot longer for them to fgure out.”

Using the device’s built-in parental control features. To protect children’s digital safety when

children use smartspeakersto ask questions and browse digital content, nearly all parents mentioned

using parental control featuresto reduce their children’s potential exposure to inappropriate content.

P10 shared that their children used smart speakers a lot for media consumption and they set up

restrictions accordingly:

“For the Google Hub: the videos are all set to preteens, the music is all set to non-explicit

lyrics . . .[For YouTube apps] we monitor what they watch and also go through the history

of what they watch . . . Just make sure . . . those channels are age-appropriate.”

Parents also appropriated other device features as parental controls. For instance, P17 set passwords for smartphones and tablets to prevent their children from accidentally controlling other

smart home devices. P14 and P22 confgured “device downtime” for their smart speakers so that

their children could not play music or videos after bedtime.

4.2.3 Parents’ rules and guidance for safe use. In addition to putting restrictions in place, many

parents established rules and boundaries for appropriate use, provided guidance on dealing with

unexpected situations, and instructed their children not to abuse given access.

Rules and boundaries of appropriate use. Most parents shared that they taught children how to

appropriately use smart home devices after the initial setup, such as “what [their children] should

and should not do” in P6’s words. Over time, parents gradually established boundaries and rules as

children became more familiar with smart home technologies, and parents spent eforts in teaching

children how to give commands and exercise controls. As P5 shared:

“It took long before they fgured out what those rules were, and now I don’t really seem to

have a problem with them . . .If I add anything to the house, [there] needs to have a rule

you can or you can’t do this. [The device] is a little bit tempting [to the kids] at frst. It

quickly loses its attraction . . .Now we understand the rules and that’s just how we use it.”

Several parents emphasized the importance of providing reasons behind the rules. P13 gave an

example of how they explained their rules for a smart lock:

“We try to explain why we don’t want him to do stuf. It’s not just, ‘hey, no, don’t do this.’

It’s ‘we don’t want you to unlock it, because we don’t want the door unlocked [and] we

don’t want people to come inside.”’

Education on when things go wrong. When uncertain or unfamiliar events occurred, some parents

also taught their children how to react to such situations. P12 said their children were trained to

stop the smart speaker if it plays a song that nobody knows as a mechanism to prevent exposure to

inappropriate content. P6 highlighted that their child “knows not to order anything. He knows that if

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Child Safety in the Smart Home 471:15

the Echo asks him to confrm something, he has to get one of us.” For devices like smart locks and

smart speakers, parents shared that their children might keep pressing buttons or failed at getting

voice commands executed because of the delayed feedback, and this was a moment when parents

would provide guidance. As P11 shared:

“There’s not a lot of [places] where I forbid them to do something, but I will coach them.

With the lock, a lot of times I would say ‘It’s not going to work if you keep pressing it. You

leave it alone, you press it once, and then you wait to see what happens.’”

Similarly, P23 talked about helping their children when they could not get voice commands to

work on the smart speaker:

“Sometimes they struggle [with] getting the voice commands right or enunciating properly

. . .Then I teach them or remind them there’s a manual way to do it, or coach them on how

to interact with it . . . the specifc kind of commands to give it or whatnot.”

Regarding smart speakers in particular, similar to what Beneteau et al. [8] have found, parents

considered it important to cultivate their children’s manners by teaching them to be polite with

the speaker in giving voice commands. Sometimes smart speakers can become a conversation

disruptor [8] and children become over-reliant on them, so parents might impose more limits, as

P4 described:

“We’d be having a conversation during dinner, and they’re asking [Alexa] a question

rather than us. Then she’s not getting it right, and she’s going on . . .It’s just annoying.

So, we’ve made a rule now that you can’t talk to [Alexa] during dinner, and now they

generally know [that] I think that is annoying [and] she can’t be part of the conversation.”

Balancing trust and restrictions. Less commonly, parents with older children gave their children

unlimited access to and control over smart home devices because they thought their children had

proven to be trustworthy rule followers. Nonetheless, parents would still teach children not to

abuse or take advantage of the access. For instance, P20 said their nine-year-old “could go and

control everything” but “if he abuses it, it’s going to [be] taken away.” Such level of trust was typically

cultivated through the children’s persistent rule-following habits, as P15 explained:

“We do a lot of talking to our kids from an early age . . .We explain to them and ask them

to repeat back and [we] would say ‘do you understand why we feel this way, why you

can’t do this?’ They’re kind of rule followers, not because we’re strict, but because they

understand.”

Some children might treat smart home devices as toys. For instance, P22 found that their children

were mixing up iPad with Google Home Hub because they both had a touchscreen and could be

used for entertainment, so they stressed to the children that Google Home Hub was “for interacting

with the home, not for media consumption.” P17 tried to build conversations around the distinction

with their children and called out specifc devices that should not be messed with:

“Thinking about smart lights, we don’t want [kids] turning them on at certain times of

the night or playing with them. They’re not toys . . . along with the security cameras and

the doorbell.”

Rules around physical safety. Smart doorbells, and locks were central in conversations around

physical safety. Some parents instructed their children to be careful with the smart lock code, and to

use the smart doorbell as an alternative to answer the door. For example, P2 granted their children

an individual door lock access code but emphasized related rules, such as not sharing the code with

anyone else and remembering to re-lock the door if nobody’s at home. P4 and P10 both shared

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471:16 Kaiwen Sun et al.

experiences of teaching their children to use the smart doorbell safely in line with common home

safety rules. As P10 described:

“For the video doorbell, unless they know the person we tell them not to talk to anyone. If

they don’t know the person, then either come get me or my wife or my mom. But we tell

them not to talk to strangers [through the video doorbell].”

P4 added that it took their children practice to understand why it would be safer to check the

doorbell display rather than run to the door directly:

“For a long time they would run to the door and fing it [open]. We were like, ‘come on

guys,’ because sometimes it’s somebody selling something . . . and you don’t feel like talking

to them. So it took a while for us to train them. They fnally did learn . . . So [now] if

somebody rang the doorbell, they could just run into the kitchen [to check the doorbell

notifcation on the smart speaker], which you can’t see from our front door, and they can

see who’s there.”

Rules around digital safety. For digital safety, only a few parents said they had taught children

what to look out for when using smart home technologies. With security cameras, P22 mentioned

that they taught their children to unplug the camera if “someone yells out [through the camera] and

scares them.” P18 discussed with their children about advertisements on Google Home Hub that

“try to sell them things” and the importance of staying vigilant against these ads. P20 explained to

their child that scams and hacking attacks can also occur with smart home devices, hoping that the

child could be careful about any solicitations of personal information:

“We educated him about scams . . . [If] somebody’s email is asking for your information,

don’t give it to them . . .I feel like the smart home devices kind of open up that same

level of risk, like if your Google screen asks you for some information about yourself, you

need to question that . . .Why does it want that? . . .It’s really just about protecting your

information and identity . . . and not giving out information without frst questioning it.”

P7 highlighted that maintaining a safe smart home environment and having conversations about

diferent aspects of safety had been a constant efort to them:

“I am very careful with them about what they share online, who they can talk to online,

and what information they’re putting out into the world. Now I say [to my children that]

within our home you’re always safe, but I also reiterate how the choices that I’m making

in our home keeps them that way. Safety is not a one-time event, it is a constant efort

. . .We do a lot of . . . talk about what things around the house should you be touching and

playing with.”

In summary, in phase 2 parents constantly re-evaluated whether the smart home environment is

safe for children and how it could be made safer — safety risks arose as children had limited risk

perceptions, were exposed to inappropriate content, or struggled to control the device properly.

Parents took measures to mitigate safety risks, such as by removing or limiting access, setting rules,

and providing guidance and explanations about risks and for their rules.

4.3 Phase Three: Evolving Safety Needs As Children Grow Up

Beyond immediate safety considerations and mitigation, parents considered how their approaches

to safety issues would need to evolve as their children become preteens and teenagers. In contrast

to the reactive nature of phase 2, parents described proactively anticipating potential safety risks

and needs in the future, such as teaching their children to identify and handle digital safety risks.

Parents with young children also foresaw that the children would be more involved in the smart

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Child Safety in the Smart Home 471:17

home experience, have their own devices, and eventually demand more privacy and autonomy

from their parents.

4.3.1 Need to teach digital safety. Most parents said that they had been closely monitoring their

younger children’s smart home interactions, so the chances of their children being exposed to risky

situations were low at the moment. This explains why only a few parents had discussed digital

safety threats with their children directly, but many indicated the necessity of such conversations

in the future. As acknowledged by P12: “we haven’t had in-depth educational lessons on privacy and

information security . . . [But as] they get more uncontrolled access, we’ll have to have more of those

conversations.” Several parents further noted that engaging children in digital safety conversations

should be done sooner rather than later to help children form safe online habits early on so the

lessons will be “ingrained longer” (P6) and become critical to cultivate children’s “online hygiene,

promoting a learning experience, rather than trying to necessarily [use parental controls to] flter all

this [unsafe content] stuf out” (P13).

4.3.2 Need to adapt parental rules. Parents noted that their current parental rules and mitigation

strategies might not work well astheir young children become preteens and teenagers. P5 speculated

that their children might “become more independent or a little braver about breaking the rules” in the

next few years, which would require reinforcement of established safety rules. Ur et al. [89] found

that teens in their study were uncomfortable with parents’ surveillance through auditable door

locks and entryway cameras. Similarly, some parents in our study considered making adjustments

in reaction to children’s potential objection to parental controls when they grow up, as P14 shared:

“The [parental controls] that are in place limit what they can do . . . [and] I need them

right now. I’m sure once [the children] get older they’ll complain, but we’ll deal with that

as we come to it.”

Some parents anticipated that their children would want to have their own smart home devices

and use them in a private setting such as their bedrooms once they grow older. P11 described being

aware of the preparation and education needed for such transition. Nevertheless, the quotes from

both P11 and P14 conveyed the sentiment that the adaptation of parental rules was something to

be addressed later on, and they did not seem to have developed concrete strategies:

“If the kids got the Alexa speakers in their rooms . . . especially as they get older and they

can start asking it inappropriate questions or adult questions . . . Those are the sort of

concerns that I would have as they get older, and if they were to get a more private usage

of [the smart devices]. It’ll come and I’ll have to put a lot of thought into it at that point”

(P11).

4.3.3 Need to build trust. Parents highlighted that a key element in adapting parental rules was to

build a trusting relationship with their children and respect the children’s autonomy. Both P4 and

P13 highlighted that a trusting relationship would foster open parent-child communication. As P4

explained: “I don’t love the idea of censoring them [to ensure their digital safety]. I would much rather

be talking to them about all the things that you can fnd on the Internet.” Similarly, P13 mentioned

that when their children have “questionable questions” they would turn to the parents frst, not the

smart speaker. P13 also noted that all the voice commands from the children went to the parents’

Amazon account for now, but that would likely change:

“When you’re starting to talk about them getting to their teenage years, to me . . .it’s a

conversation of ‘should you have your own Amazon account? I’m not your guard anymore

because you may want to start asking questions that you don’t necessarily feel comfortable

sharing with us for whatever reason.’”

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471:18 Kaiwen Sun et al.

Similarly, P1 and P7 noted that parents need to “let go of the full control” at some point. P1

explained that “letting go” means a higher likelihood for children to encounter safety risks, but

also more teaching opportunities for parents. P7 highlighted that a precursor to giving children

more autonomy is to “instill natural skepticism:”

“I can’t control what they’re going to download when they’re 13, I’m going to have to let

go. The only thing I can do is for the next fve years until they turn 13 . . .instill in them

this sort of natural skepticism . . . [such as] ‘if the product is free, you’re the product’ . . .I

really liked the skepticism that’s involved in that thought . . .I have to let go and say I’ve

done the best that I can.”

In summary, phase 3 shows parents’ intentions to educate children about digital safety risks

and corresponding protective strategies as they grow up. Parents were aware of the need to adapt

parental rules in respect of children’s autonomy, although they tended to delay thinking about how

to do that until a later point. However, not all parents shared the same sentiment toward children’s

smart home safety, and parental controls in existing smart home technologies might not cater to

parents’ and children’s evolving needs, as we discuss below.

4.4 Factors Influencing Parents’ Considerations of Smart Home Child Safety Risks

Across the three phases, we observed that parents’ perceptions and approaches regarding smart

home child safety were shaped by six factors: parenting style, parents’ tech-savviness, parents’

trust in tech companies, children’s age and developmental diferences, news media, and device

characteristics.

4.4.1 Parenting style. Among the parents we interviewed, we identifed two general parenting

styles — vigilant or complacent — in dealing with smart home child safety risks. This dichotomy is

in line with the preventative vs. reactive parental approaches in guiding teens to manage privacy

risks on social media [101] and the instructive vs. restrictive mediation strategies highlighted in

the EU Kids Online network report [54]. Most parents leaned toward the vigilant end in managing

perceived safety risks to their children. These parents were aware of and cautious about digital

safety risks. Many of them were tech-savvy enough to understand what could go wrong with smart

home technologies, and most of them realized how these technologies lacked design considerations

for children, which may have contributed to more restrictive and controlling parenting approaches.

As such, they tended to be critical in selecting smart home devices and refected on how their

children’s privacy and security might be afected.

Vigilant parents with younger children tended to watch out for physical safety risks by deliberately avoiding devices with heat or mechanical components and childproofng smart home

technologies to avoid injuries. They also used preventative mediation approaches such as setting

rules about smart device use and leveraged existing parental controls [54]. Additionally, many of

them considered instructive mediation approaches to educate children about digital smart home

safety particularly as the children grow up. For instance, P14 believed that “in terms of online safety

and their privacy [when using smart home technologies] . . .I don’t see any problems that can’t be

solved with education.”

A few parents exhibited a more complacent, relaxed, and trusting sentiment toward children’s

smart home safety. They appeared to be more optimistic about smart home technologies and

emphasized the technologies’ benefts over safety risks or privacy implications. Part of the relaxed

attitude stems from them being confdent that the careful thoughts they put into smart home

device selection and management could ensure a safe experience for their children. P13 described

encouraging their four-year-old to explore smart home technologies in a guided environment:

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Child Safety in the Smart Home 471:19

“I would rather have him have a leg up on [online safety awareness] and have the ability

to self regulate screen time and stuf like that at a young age . . . as opposed to making

[technologies] a forbidden fruit or something that’s mysterious and that they have to go

somewhere else to learn about.”

4.4.2 Parents’ tech-savviness. Many parents described themselves being tech-savvy either because

of their occupation or because they were smart home enthusiasts. These parents tended to be

intuitively attentive to digital safety, privacy, and security aspects in deciding what devices to

purchase, as P8 described “I’m a safety engineer, so I am already hypersensitive to safety things [about

smart home technologies].” They deliberately avoided certain cloud-based smart devices, such as

smart video cameras. Furthermore, some parents weaved their tech-savviness into preventative

measures by confguring their home automation from the ground up, paying attention to device

updates, and reading privacy policies. P7 gave an example:

“I don’t use anything that requires a cloud. So that’s a total non starter for me. Beyond

that, I am probably one of the nine people in the world that actually read the privacy

policies and make decisions based on what I read in the privacy policies.”

By contrast, several parents who were not tech professionals did not seem to intuitively associate

children’s use of smart home technologies with physical safety or security risks. They refected on

how smart home technologies could introduce digital safety risks to children once we probed them

about it — some commented that the interview helped them better think about children’s smart

home safety as they turn to teenagers. As P4 said:

“I haven’t really thought about this [smart home safety] before our conversation because

our kids are very trustworthy . . .The idea of them trying to see something that they’re not

supposed to is not on their radar yet. Now that I think about it, I guess they could be like,

‘Hey [Alexa], show me naked pictures.’ Yet, I don’t think that they’re there yet.”

4.4.3 Parents’ (dis)trust in tech companies. Similar to Lau et al.’s fnding [51] that users’ trust

toward tech companies plays a critical role in smart speaker adoption, we observed in our study

that such trust shaped parents’ selection of smart home technologies and which devices they

considered safe for their children to use. Many parents indicated that their trust in certain tech

companies prompted them to adopt smart home products from the company. For instance, several

parents mentioned choosing only HomeKit-compatible [97] smart home products because they

trusted Apple exclusively. Others preferred the Google Home system and felt comfortable with

their children using Google’s products.

On the contrary, some parents expressed distrust toward certain tech companies and thought

their products could pose threats to children’s digital safety and privacy. These parents tended

to avoid purchasing products from distrusted companies or used the product with caution and

skepticism. For example, P5 opted for Apple’s HomeKit smart home system because they felt

annoyed by the business models of companies like Amazon and Google who “collect information in

the market in any way they can.” P14, who was already using the Google Home system, was also

upset about Google’s lack of transparency in collecting and using their children’s data.

4.4.4 Children’s age and developmental diferences. Not surprisingly, children’s age also played an

important role in parents’ smart home safety considerations. Parents with younger children (i.e.,

5-8 years old or younger) considered that their children had a limited understanding of smart home

technologies and were not heavily involved in the smart home experience. Consequently, these

parents primarily focused on ensuring children’s physical safety through child-proofng, such as by

putting devices out of children’s reach and hiding cables. While many parents would teach young

children basic rules (e.g., dos and don’ts about using the smart door lock), some considered digital

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471:20 Kaiwen Sun et al.

safety topics too advanced for young children due to their limited online experiences and potential

struggles to understand common home safety concepts.

For older children (i.e., ages 8-11, close to preteen years), their parents appeared to worry more

about digital safety given older children’s wider access to diferent devices, and these parents

described plans to teach their children about digital safety guidelines going forward. Thinking

about their children turning into teenagers in a few years, these parents also foresaw their children’s

needs for more autonomy and privacy in using smart home technologies.

In addition to age, two parents mentioned certain smart home experiences could be a doubleedged sword for children with developmental diferences. P6 shared that their child with sensory

sensitivities found the red lights on smart speakers triggering:

“If his Alexa isn’t working it will give him a red ring. He actually gets really freaked out

by that, very scared of it . . .It’s really bothersome. We’re not sure exactly what that is

about it. He’s got some social issues so we think that might have something to do with it.”

P3 shared an opposite example by describing how traditional door locks were not user-friendly

to their autistic child and why they switched to a smart lock to keep the child safe:

“[Before the smart lock] he didn’t know how to open the door to go outside . . . or he did,

but he didn’t have the strength to twist the deadbolt. Once he fgured out how to do it,

he would just go outside and I wouldn’t know. And he doesn’t tell us like when [he goes

outside] . . . The risk of him leaving in the middle of night or getting outside and running

in the street is much higher for us. That’s actually like a real concern.”

4.4.5 News media. When discussing privacy and security concerns around smart security cameras

and baby monitors, multiple parents referred to news reports about cameras being hacked to

threaten children [93]. This case reinforced parents’ caution with using security cameras around

children, indicating that some parents’ objections to cloud-based cameras were heavily shaped by

news reports. For instance, P9 commented that “even though Amazon owns Ring, I don’t entirely trust

Ring because of some of the [security breaches] they’ve had.” These parents decided not to purchase

smart cameras, avoided brands implicated in news of data breaches, or only used security cameras

in public areas at home but not in children’s bedrooms. In line with prior work that shows the

infuence of news coverage on people’s security and privacy behaviors [20, 21, 112], parents in

our study tended to be cautious about smart home devices and brands that were featured in news

negatively, and considered them unsafe or untrustworthy.

4.4.6 Device characteristics. Device characteristics were a salient infuencer of parents’ purchase

decisions (phase 1). Parents took heat, motors, and a lack of certain product certifcation (e.g., CE or

UL certifed) asindicatorsthat the device might pose threatsto children’s physicalsafety. Meanwhile,

parents thought of digital safety risks for devices that could potentially expose the family’s sensitive

information, such as security cameras and smart speakers with displays. The consideration of device

characteristics continued in phase 2 as parents realized additional safety risks when their children

become active users. Specifcally, parents considered a device unsafe if children could intentionally

or accidentally be exposed to inappropriate content or trigger dangerous home automation actions

with physical consequences (e.g., accidentally disarming the security system). As P1 explained:

“I would never hook our real security system up to the voice control . . . Turning the alarm

on and of is not something I want them to be able to do . . . Security and physical access

control would be two things that I would be uncomfortable with the kids having command

access to.”

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Child Safety in the Smart Home 471:21

4.5 Desired improvements to support children’s smart home safety

As parents discussed their safety concerns, strategies, and thoughts about evolving safety needs,

they brought up desired improvements to support children’s safe use of smart home technologies.

Two topics were particularly prominent: improved parental controls and more accountability from

smart home companies.

4.5.1 Fine-grained and context-adaptive access control. Many parents stressed that an ideal smart

home experience should allow parents to pick and choose what parts of the system children can

control (e.g., by having a dedicated child profle) and the degree of control (e.g., allowing children

to adjust the thermostat by only a few degrees within a defned range). P20, whose nine-year-old

could control all smart devices at home, said the frst step to ensure children’s safety was to give

parents “administrative control” that could exclude children from accessing certain devices that

they should not have control over. P10 shared an idea of enabling smart speakers to distinguish a

child’s voice and automatically switch to the level of access and control catering to an established

child profle:

“Right now they don’t have their own [Google] account . . .Anyone can use [the home app]

. . .It’ll be good if Google Home could recognize my kids’ voices, like ‘oh, this is my son, he’s

nine years old, so this is the content he’s more likely to want, or if he requests something,

appropriate content will be served’ . . .[and] allow me to be the parent of that account and

all the diferent restrictions.”

P8 added the need to separate the smart home interface for adults and for children, so that their

children could “have their own screens or . . .interfaces to work with, where they’re not going to control

the house.” P17 envisioned that a smart thermostat could “add a child’s account that could only

manipulate things by a few degrees or so.” P14 praised Netfix for allowing individual profles with

customized maturity ratings, but noted that this feature was not available in their voice assistant:

“On Netfix I can go to a separate profle for the kids and it locks out the stuf they can’t

watch, so the [child profle] features are there. But when it comes to the voice assistant

interaction, which is where the kids do all of their [interactions] . . .it just uses the defaults.”

Smart speakers were commonly adopted by our parents and many reported that their children

often asked smart speakers questions or gave commands. P12, who had four children and multiple

smart speakers at home, expressed the desire of “a digest view” of activity logs from all children

and “notifcations around things that look suspicious.”

4.5.2 Transparency and accountability from smart home companies. While some parents relied on

smart home devices’ built-in parental controls to protect children’s safety, some complained that

the parental control setup process could have been more upfront and transparent. P14 recounted

that they had never received information or notifcations about parental settings from Google, even

though Google obviously knew there were young children in the household based on the amount

of diaper ads received:

“The parental settings that I found weren’t advertised to me. At no point did Google say

‘hey, you have little kids’ or ‘if you’ve got little kids here’s how to set up the privacy

settings.’ I had to go and google parental controls . . .I know that Google knows I have

young children. The amount of diaper ads I get . . . they know I have a small child in the

house. No point did they go, ‘Hey, here’s how to protect your kids.’ Or ‘here’s how to control

your kid’s access.’”

Another source of frustration for P14 was not knowing how their children’s data had been

collected and used and not being able to delete collected information:

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471:22 Kaiwen Sun et al.

“As a parent, I would like more information on what is known about my kids. I assume

somewhere there is ‘these kids are really into Frozen and The Little Mermaid and they like

to turn the lights on at this time of the morning’ . . .I know that that profle exists. I would

like the transparency [from Google] to say that it exists, and I would like the ability to

delete it. I know that in the European Union, they have the ability to ask tech companies

to delete profles, the fact that it doesn’t exist in North America, even for the adults is

interesting. . . . [My kids] are minors [and] they don’t have that advocacy to go ‘I don’t

want this.’ They can’t check on the ‘I don’t consent’ box on websites.”

P17, who worked with one of the major smart speaker manufacturers, raised that most smart

speakers in the market ofered limited parental control options and companies had little incentive

to improve this. P17 wanted to involve children more in the smart home experiences, but worried

about shady practices around the collection and use of their children’s data:

“It’s not enough to put the responsibility of safety and security on just the user . . .I really

love the idea of . . . childproofng your smart home. [But] it’s in its infancy . . .I do a lot of

work with [company] and their general stance is that we don’t talk about [childproofng]

with kids under the age of 13 because they just don’t want to take responsibility.”

Another reason to increase the accountability of smart home companies is that not all users are

able to and empowered to protect their children’s online safety. P21 considered themselves not that

tech-savvy and worried that their children would soon be able to bypass parental controls, calling

for more educational eforts by companies:

“It will be better if [those companies] can have parent tutorials . . .I feel like . . .if you’re

not tech savvy, then it’s hard for you to get on top of everything . . .I like it’s easier on this

age [when children are young], but they grow [more tech-savvy] and they will get better

[at breaking parental rules].”

P6 drew from their occupation as a technical writer in discussing how companies should educate

users. Emami-Naeini et al. [27] proposed privacy and security “nutrition labels” for IoT devices to

inform consumers’ purchase decisions. Akin to this idea, P6 envisioned that companies can feature

safety-relevant information when there are new updates and on the product’s front page saliently:

“As smart devices evolve . . . you really need a good system for teaching people how to stay

secure on their own devices . . .When there are new updates and stuf, [then] people should

have to go through a new security tutorial . . .I actually think that the primary source of

risk mitigation should be through education and the sharing of information . . .I think a

lot about smart home stuf and the way it’s advertised, as [the company] doesn’t tell you

the drawbacks of them . . .I just don’t think they’re putting [risks] on the main page [to

inform the users].”

The main takeaway is that parents should not be solely responsible for children’s smart home

safety. Instead, more systematic efort is required to ensure smart home technologies provide safe

and child-centered digital experiences [77]. Our fndings indicate that parents rely on parental

control features in smart home devices to manage children’s safe use, demand more transparency

on how children’s data is collected/used, and desire educational resources to support both parents

and children in protecting themselves from smart home safety risks.

5 DISCUSSION

Our fndings contribute insights on parents’ perception of smart home child safety risks across

three phases, factors that infuence parents’ safety perceptions, and parents’ strategies to mitigate

perceived safety risks. Next, we discuss our fndings in relation to prior work and conclude with

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Child Safety in the Smart Home 471:23

our study’s implications for designers and policymakers to better support child safety in smart

homes.

5.1 Child Safety Risks in Smart Homes Are Nuanced

Prior work has examined children’s physical home safety [44, 52, 64] and online digital safety

needs [54–56] in relation to parents’ involvement. Building on this, our study investigated parents’

perceptions of children’s safety in interacting with smart home technologies. Our fndings highlight

that parents’ perceptions of child safety risks in smart homes are nuanced, include both physical

and digital aspects, and evolve across diferent phases.

5.1.1 Evolving smart home safety needs. In examining parents’ considerations of child safety risksin

smart homes, it is worth noting that child safety had already been factored into parents pre-purchase

considerations and decisions. Parents were cautious about devices that might pose obvious physical

safety, privacy, or security risks. However, even though parents thought about safety, many safety

risks did not emerge until children started interacting with the smart devices at home. Examples of

unanticipated safety risks included physical safety incidents due to children’s inappropriate use

and exposure to unsuitable content due to the ease with which children could often access multiple

devices in a connected home, in particular when smart speakers’ voice interaction lowered the

access barrier for children.

Karapanos et al. [41] highlighted the temporality of user experience: consumers’ acceptance and

evaluation of products constitute a refective process across multiple phases from pre-purchase

to post-consumption. More specifc to smart home technologies, Emami-Naeini et al. [28] found

that privacy and security were not primary considerations in consumers’ purchase decisions, but

became more salient through later use. While parents in our study appeared to be more aware of

privacy and security risks before purchase as they actively thought about safety risks for their

children, parents’ evaluation of children’s smart home safety evolved with actual use, prompting

them to reactively adapt mitigation strategies to their changing safety risk perceptions. Our fndings

show that parents have little support in fguring out child safety risks in advance, resulting in

unpleasant – and potentially dangerous – surprises during actual use. Thisindicates a need for better

support mechanisms that help parents comprehensively consider child safety risks in pre-purchase

evaluation.

Furthermore, our fndings suggest that parents recognize the need to adapt parental rules as

children grow up (phase 3), such as by shifting the focus on education about digital safety and giving

children more agency in accessing and using smart home devices. These fndings echo prior work on

parent-teen interactions regarding online safety risks [10, 18, 29, 100, 101], which has highlighted

that teenagers desire some degree of privacy and autonomy from their parents in navigating the

online world. Nevertheless, parents in our study tended to defer the development of concrete

strategies to the future. The lack of granular parental controls in smart home technologies further

casts doubt on whether parents can fnd a middle ground between having no or too restrictive

controls in place. Too passive interventions or no intervention may amplify children’s exposure

to risks, whereas too paternalistic approaches may diminish interpersonal trust [18] and reduce

opportunities for children to learn about efective risk-coping [101].

5.1.2 Smart home amplifies conventional physical and digital child safety risks. Prior research has

primarily studied privacy and security issues in family use of smart home technologies, with

children often framed as smart home passive users or bystanders [46, 51, 106–108]. Other work has

examined online safety risks [54, 57] and physical home safety issues [44, 81] related to children.

Our fndings highlight that smart home technologies deserve particular attention as they combine

both physical and digital safety risks for children. On one hand, smart home technologies are

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471:24 Kaiwen Sun et al.

physical objects, which are comparable to more traditional household appliances in terms of their

capability of introducing safety hazards, particularly for children who are usually adventurous

experimenters and unconventional users. On the other hand, smart home technologies serve as

portals to the Internet and varying digital experiences; such connections open the door to complex

information fows, child-inappropriate content, or even surveillance and harassment from strangers

when the device is compromised.

Our fndings show that some parents used conventional child-proofng techniques on smart home

devices such as organizing cables to avoid strangulation, keeping devices out of children’s reach to

prevent injuries, and hiding small devices that pose choking hazards. Parents’ child-proofng eforts

for smart home devices were similar to how parents would child proof other objects in their home.

Nonetheless, even with child-proofng eforts, parents still reported unanticipated safety incidents

such as a smart vacuum accidentally running over children’s toes and knocking items down. Such

incidents provide evidence that existing smart home devices have not sufciently considered child

safety in hardware design. By contrast, other objects in the home, such as furniture and appliances

are either pre-equipped with child safety measures or can be readily augmented to make them child

safe. For instance, tall furniture, such as book shelves or dressers, often include retaining straps

to mount them to the wall and prevent them from tipping over when a child climbs up on them.

Similarly, electrical appliances such as ovens, dishwashers, and washing machines often have child

safety locks that can be set to prevent young children from opening their doors. Cabinet doors

can be easily augmented with magnetic child safety locks, and stove top controls can be made

child-safe with special knobs that prevent activation by children. Comparable safety measures are

lacking for most smart home technologies.

Furthermore, smart home technologies amplify existing safety risks for children [86]. Prior

research has uncovered gaps in children’s mental models of online privacy risks [49, 84, 111]; our

study similarly shows that children’s awareness and perception of smart home safety risks are

limited due to immature cognition and a tendency to treat smart home devices as toys. Enabling

the control of many devices and home automation with voice commands substantially lowers

barriers for children to trigger a swath of smart home devices including safety-critical ones. For

instance, a child could ask the smart speaker to increase the temperature for a connected smart

water heater to dangerous levels, or accidentally unlock doors and let strangers into the home

using voice commands and without parents’ permission. While parents in our study described these

situations as hypotheticals, they are realistic and could cause severe consequences. Smart home

technologies, particularly smart speakers as the control hub for smart homes, are placed centrally

in homes to facilitate ease of interaction [51], further reducing the access barriers compared to a

smart home app on a parent’s password-protected phone.

Our study shows that parents are gatekeepers who identify and ensure children’s evolving safety

needs in the smart home environment. However, the lack of child-centered design considerations

in smart home technologies amplifes conventional physical and digital child safety risks. Examples

of home appliances with child safety measures suggest that enjoying the benefts of smart home

technologies and ensuring child safety do not have to be a trade-of; one can have both as long as

smart home technologies adopt child-centered design — design that acknowledges and empowers

children’s need for safety and autonomy [77].

5.2 Design and Policy Implications

Drawing from our fndings, we discuss how smart home product design should reduce child safety

risks through providing child-centered smart home experiences by default and more granular

parental controls for risk management. We further note the need for more transparency and

educational eforts from smart home companies.

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Child Safety in the Smart Home 471:25

5.2.1 Child-Safety-Centered Design in Smart Home Technologies. We argue that smart home technologies targeted for family use should incorporate child-safety design features, as our fndings

reveal that smart home technologies could pose physical and digital safety risks when they are

placed in the home environment and used by children in unconventional or unintended ways.

Making smart home technologies safer for children does not necessarily sacrifce the product

experience, as shown in many other products for which child safety is an important design consideration or built-in feature due to regulatory requirements. For instance, the US Consumer Product

Safety Commission requires that all child-facing products (consumer products designed or intended

primarily for children 12 years old or younger) comply with a set of federal safety rules, e.g., the

product should avoid restricted substances and sharp points or edges [15]. Even for products that

are not specifcally designed for children but could be in frequent contact with children, many have

incorporated child safety measures [15]. Containers, washing machines, and many other home

appliances have conventional child safety locks to prevent children from reaching dangerous contents, randomly pressing buttons, or engaging in risky behaviors. Robomow, a smart lawnmower,

has child locks and automatic stop features to protect children from getting hurt when it detects

obstacles [95].

The concept of optimal defaults describes how environmental design that makes default decisions

the healthiest can positively impact human fourishing [32]. Similarly, child-centered defaults [77]

consider children’s well-being as a priority by changing the environmental and structural determinants rather than delegating gate-keeping responsibilities to parents and caregivers. Drawing

inspirations from these concepts, we advocate that smart home tech companies should adopt a

child-safety-centered design approach by rethinking how child safety needs should factor into the

product design as a frst principle. Child-centered experiences [77] with appropriate safety measures

and interventions can be established through available user settings and choice architecture [85]. As

an example, smart robot vacuums are not intended for children’s use but could be in an environment

that involves children. A child-safety-centered design approach could involve ongoing testing of

smart home devices for the unexpected ways that children may use them (e.g., for smart robot

vacuums, have sensors that detect children’s presence and weight, as some children like to step on

the vacuum [34]). Exploratory work with parents could examine what types of safety settings could

decrease chances of accidents (e.g., a confrmation step before vacuum activation that asks “Are

you sure there are no children in this area?”). For all smart home technologies that are advertised

for family use, smart home companies should further conduct evidence-based safety testing to

understand how children might be in contact with, use, or potentially abuse the device in order to

reduce the possibility of safety issues as part of the product design.

5.2.2 Granular Parental Controls. Smart home technologies have been found to create tensions

among diferent user groups such as couples, roommates, and parents and children/teenagers due

to their diferent levels of access, power, and needs [26, 33, 46, 51, 89, 109]. Similarly, parents in

our study unanimously complained about the lack of customization and granularity in existing

parental control features, which suggests that current smart home technology design lacks the

consideration of multi-user scenarios. While prior work has noted that children are becoming active

smart home users and should be considered in technology design [79], our fndings show that most

smart home products do not yet seem to recognize children as a critical audience with unique

usage patterns and needs. Safety issues arise as children have a limited understanding of both how

smart home technologies work and potential safety risks. Moreover, our fndings suggest that some

children are prone to treating smart home technologies as toys; others might accidentally trigger

actions by pressing buttons or through voice commands. Some parents specifcally commented on

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471:26 Kaiwen Sun et al.

tech companies’ insufcient eforts in considering, communicating, and implementing child safety

features.

Our fndings align with prior work [18, 33, 36, 39, 108, 109] in identifying that the “all or nothing”

access control fails in family settings when children and teenagers are treated as passive users.

Without meaningful parental controls, parents were struggling with managing child safety issues,

and some expressed desires for more selective access management as part of parental controls.

Rather than allowing children to control all devices in the home, parents wanted to give children

control only over certain devices (e.g., smart lights in the child’s bedroom) while restricting access

to others (e.g., lights in a sibling’s bedroom) and preventing access to safety-critical devices (e.g.,

security systems and smart water heaters). Several parents brought up the idea of a child profle for

smart home systems that would provide limited, child-friendly, and safe access to parts of the smart

home. Considering children’s unique usage patterns and experiences in product design would

be an important step toward making space for children in the family [17, 75] — children are and

should be viewed as equal members of the family, and this ideology should be refected in product

design. Children should be able to actively participate in the smart home environment in ways

that ensure their safety, promote their sense of autonomy and competency, and enable adaptation

over time. Policymakers and regulators should urge or require companies to provide granular and

context-adaptive controls that are easier to use and more helpful for parents to limit what their

children can access.

5.2.3 Accountability And Transparency to Support Children’s Safety. Several parents highlighted

that smart home companies should be held accountable for being transparent about data practices

and for supporting parents to protect children’s safety in smart homes. P14’s shared experience

with Google provides a vivid example: their children’s daily interactions with Google Home had

enabled Google to make inferences about the family status and send diaper ads regularly; however,

they felt Google had never been transparent about what and how their children’s data was collected

and used, nor did the company attempt to use the respective inferences to make the parents aware

of options to manage child safety or delete the collected data.

Smart home devices intended for family use capture a wealth of data — including children’s

data — inevitably or even intentionally. Current privacy laws such as the General Data Protection

Regulation (GDPR) in Europe, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the Children’s

Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) in the US require companies to obtain parental consent

for processing of their children’s data. Nevertheless, smart home companies rarely incorporate

parental consent or ofer options to limit data collection about children because the devices are

targeted at adults – conveniently ignoring the fact that they are frequently placed in family settings

and used by children of all ages. The large amount of data companies are collecting and making

inferences from should be used to help parents better protect their children instead of generating

targeted ads as the primary or even sole purpose. In all, companies should be held accountable to

make smart home technologies safer for children and family, rather than pretending “there are no

users under the age of 13” to avoid liabilities.

5.2.4 Support Parents With Educational Eforts. Many parents in our study were tech-savvy, likely

because we recruited parents who were already smart home adopters. However, existing research

shows that most adults do not have a clear understanding of data collection, profling, and relevant

data protection laws in smart homes and other contexts [5, 40, 76, 109]; low-income parents in

particular struggle to properly support children’s tech use and keep up with the latest changes in

technologies [78]. As several parents in our study highlighted, tech companies should put more

efort into educating parents (and users in general) about privacy, security, and safety aspects of

their products. Doing this would empower parents to be more informed when deciding to adopt

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Child Safety in the Smart Home 471:27

products and more resourceful when it comes to teaching and protecting children in using smart

home technologies.

We argue that tutorials and resources about safety should be a default part of the on-boarding

experience and throughout updates for smart home technologies. For child-facing and childinvolving smart home products, smart home companies should ideally be required to provide

guidance and resources on child safety as part of the parental control settings to demonstrate the

company’s commitment to children’s safety. Prior work has proposed “privacy nutrition labels”

as an improved format of traditional privacy policies to better communicate companies’ data

practices [42, 43], and this idea has led to Apple’s privacy labels for mobile apps in iOS 14 [12].

Emami-Naeini et al. [27] proposed privacy and security labels for IoT devices, including ratings

from independent privacy assessment organizations, data collection types, and scenarios.

Following a child-safety-centered design approach, we see the potential of incorporating child

safety information into smart home device labels to communicate safety ratings, appropriate age

for children’s use, and diferent types of potential safety risks to children. Such information could

alleviate parents’ gate-keeping burden and help parents better evaluate child safety risks in making

purchase decisions, instead of having parents caught by surprise once safety issues arise during

children’s smart home use. Moreover, federal regulatory agencies such as the US Consumer Product

Safety Commission [15] should prescribe standards for the form and content of child safety labels

for smart home devices and oversee corresponding evidence-based research and design.

6 CONCLUSION

Through 23 semi-structured interviews with parents who are smart home technology adopters, we

uncovered that parents’ perceptions of and mitigation strategies for child safety in smart homes

covered both physical and digital aspects and evolved through three phases: considerations before

purchase decisions, re-evaluation of safety risks during use, and adaptation to changing safety

needs as children grow up. We identifed six factors that shaped parents’ safety perceptions and

mitigation strategies, including parenting style, parents’ tech-savviness, parents’ trust in tech

companies, children’s age and developmental diferences, news media, and device characteristics.

Our fndings indicate opportunities for smart home products to incorporate child safety features and

provide more granular parental controls. Furthermore, smart home companies should acknowledge

that many of their products are child-facing or child-involving. As such, companies should take

responsibility and be held accountable for properly considering and mitigating child safety risks in

product design.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research has been partially funded by a University of Michigan MCubed grant (#9138) and by

the University of Michigan School of Information. We thank Amelia Smith and Maxwell Rosenzweig

for their research assistance. We are also grateful to all the participating families and the anonymous

reviewers for their constructive feedback.

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A INTERVIEW PROTOCOL

Warm-up questions on general smart home technology ownership, placement, and use.

• What type of smart home technologies and devices do you have? What do you use them for?

(Might follow up: Do you use it to connect with or control other devices?)

• What types of smart home apps have you installed on your phone? Feel free to look through

the apps on your phone. What do you use them for?

• Do you have any other automation setup as a part of your smart home experiences that we

haven’t discussed?

– For instance, Do you have a vacuuming robot like a Roomba, or an automated lawnmower?

Qestions on parents’ mental models of the safety aspect of smart home technologies.

• What are some of the important factors you consider before you purchase [smart home

device]?

– Are there any devices you thought about getting but decided not to get? Why?

– Are there any devices you used but later deactivated? Why?

• If you friends, who have young children, also consider buying a [smart home device] and

ask for your suggestions, what would you share with them regarding your experiences with

[smart home device]?

• Do you talk to your children before the purchase? If yes, what do you talk about? If not, why

not?

• Do you consider the potential impact that [smart home device] might have on children? If

yes, what are the impacts? If not, why not?

Qestions on children’s smart home use and interactions.

Be aware of more than one child and ask about each child.

• How would you explain smart home technologies (e.g. Smart speakers, cleaning robots, smart

appliances, etc.) to your child?

– (If they mention smart appliances) How would you explain the diferences between traditional appliances vs smart home appliances?

• I would love to get to know more about your child(ren), if you were to use three words to

describe your child(ren), what would you say?

• Do your children use smart home devices? Why or why not?

– How do your children access smart home devices?

– Do your children have access to the smart home apps? Why or why not? How do your

children access the smart home apps?

– Do they have the same level of access as you do (or as the siblings do)? (If yes) Have you

had situations where you wanted your children to have limited access, and if so, how did

you handle that?

– What does your child like to do with the smart home technologies you mentioned?

• Are you comfortable leaving your child alone with the [smart home device] when it is

functioning (or in use)? Why?

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471:34 Kaiwen Sun et al.

• Do children know what they can or can’t do when the [smart home device] is operating or

when they are near the [smart home device]? (Below are optional questions depending on

the type of smart home devices the participant owns:)

– What to do or not do when the cleaning robot is in use?

– What to do or not do when they use voice assistants?

– What to do or not do when using the smart lock?

– What to do or not do with the smart thermostats?

– What to do or not do with the security system or camera?

– What to do or not do when plugging something in or unplugging something?

– What to do or not do when they hear a surveillance camera notifcation sound?

– What to do or not do when they hear the smart doorbell ring?

• (If safety is not mentioned yet) One factor we’re interested in about smart home devices is

its safety with children. Some parents have safety issues or concerns regarding smart home

devices and children’s interaction with them.

– Do you or did you have any concern about children’s safety when it comes to smart home

devices?

– Are your children aware of such safety risks? How do they feel about these safety risks?

– (Optional) Have you heard any smart home safety concerns with children from friends, in

the news or other sources? If so, how do you feel about such news? Did that news concern

you, or do you think those issues are a little overblown?

• (If previous answers haven’t touched on safety characteristics of smart home devices) What

would you consider safe or unsafe about a smart home device?

– Do you consider [smart home device] safe or unsafe for your child? In what ways? Why or

why not?

Qestions on the challenges between children and smart home technologies and

parents’ corresponding mitigation strategies.

• Have your children voiced any opinions or concerns about the smart home technologies?

How do you respond to their opinions or concerns?

– Are there any challenges you see when your child interacts or uses [smart home device]?

What have you done in response to that challenge?

– Is there anything you worried about the way your child uses or interacts with the [smart

home device]? Why?

• Have you ever had disagreements with your children about how your smart home devices

are set up or used? If yes, what are they? How did you resolve the disagreement?

• Do you have any rules for your children regarding whether they can or can’t use these smart

home devices or not?

– If yes, do the rules apply to all smart home devices or are specifc for certain types of

devices or uses?

– Why are these rules important?

– How did you come up with these rules?

– How do your children react to these rules?

– Are there times that your children disagree with or don’t follow the rules? If yes, what

would you do?

Closing questions.

• What kind of features, functions or controls that the [smart home device] should have to

alleviate your concerns regarding children’s safety? Or, what kind of features, functions or

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Child Safety in the Smart Home 471:35

controls would you like to have in your smart home to alleviate your concerns regarding

children’s safety?

• Are there any questions you expected me to ask?

• Is there anything else you want to tell me about your children and your smart home devices?

B SCREENING SURVEY

(1) What type of smart home technologies do you have in your household?

• Video Entertainment: smart TV, Apple TV, Chromecast, etc.

• Home monitoring/security: security cameras, smart lock, video doorbell, baby monitor, etc.

• Smart speaker

• Smart light

• Smart blind

• Smart switch/outlet/button

• Smart thermostat

• Smart cleaning robot

• Kitchen appliances of allsorts:smart pot,smart cofee maker,smart fridge,smart microwave,

etc.

• Smart washing machine

• Smart pet/plant care

• Smart mower

• Remote controllable doors (including garage door)

• Smart home gym equipments

• Connected car

• Other (please specify)

(2) Please select the type of devices that your child(ren) have been in contact with, interacted or

used before. [Provide the same list as in Q1]

(3) For your child(ren) who have been in contact with, interacting with, or using the smart home

technologies, how old are they? [Open-ended]

(4) Please leave your contact information (name and email address) so we could reach out to

you. [Open-ended]

(5) If you are willing to be contacted for participation in future research projects that may be

relevant to this research project, please click the consent option below. (If you don’t check

this box, we consider you don’t want to be contacted for participation in future research.)

[Checkbox with text: I consent to be contacted for participation in future research.]

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471:36 Kaiwen Sun et al.

C CODEBOOK

Table 2. Codebook on children’s perceived mental models and atitudes.

Code

Observed readiness to own

or control smart home tech

Description

Parentsthought their children are trustworthy or

capable of using smart home devices or not. Can

include cases of non-use if it’s implied that children are following what they’re supposed to do.

Example Quotes

“They’re fve and seven. I highly doubt anything

suspicious is going down. I’m more reactive at this

point. [Checking audio logs on the smart speaker]

is something that I would do proactively when they

were older and capable of making graver mistakes

or if I had some kind of instinct that they were not

being honest with me right now.”

Children’s risk awareness

regarding smart homes

Parents mentioned their children’s awareness of

any types of risks such as those related to safety,

privacy, and security. Also include general online

risks outside of smart home devices such as those

in using social media or mobile apps.

“I guess he probably has like a real fedgling awareness of ‘there are other people online and they’re

not always friends.’ But no, I don’t think they have

any real concern about [safety].”

Children’s challenges with

smart home devices

Parents mentioned how their children have opinions, concerns, or challenges with smart home devices.“They’re not in any way patient. So if they press a

button on the switch, they expect results in 100 milliseconds. If things don’t respond very quickly, they

will repeatedly press the button until such time as

they either get the desired response or something

else unexpected happens.”

Children’s perception of

smart home tech

Include children’s perception of what smart

home tech is (e.g., perceive a smart speaker as a

robot) and attitudes (e.g., love the smart speaker).

Include cases of misconceptions (e.g., think a

smart home device is capable of doing X but in

reality it doesn’t).

“They know that Alexa is a computer. I don’t think

they have a solid grasp on what a computer is . . . or

why a light switch can be a computer.”

Table 3. Codebook on children’s perceived behaviors.

Code Description Example Quotes

Children’sinteractions with

smart home devices:

stream media

Examples include playing Lord of the Rings

soundtracks, streaming Netfix, Etc.

“They haven’t been using [smart home tech] very

much. It’s mostly the Echo Dot . . .streaming TV

services of Netfix and Amazon Prime on the little

Smart TV input.”

Children’sinteractions with

smart home devices:

ask questions

Examples include asking the smart speaker to

spell a word or tell a joke.

“When they’re doing homework. Sometimes if they

don’t know a word, they actually ask Google to

spell the word . . . Sometimes they try to cheat on

math homework as well, but I usually discourage

that.”

Children’sinteractions with

smart home devices:

control the lights

Examples include using voice commands to interact with smartswitches or buttons, or controlling

the lights using smart home hubs.

“We have smart lights installed in their bedrooms,

so that frst thing in the morning they can turn on

their lights by asking . . . or if they get up in the middle of the night and are scared of the dark . . .they

can ask it to be turned on.”

Children’sinteractions with

smart home devices:

check the camera

Examples include using the camera to see who’s

at the door or check how siblings behave through

the baby monitor.

“We have a video doorbell, so anytime it rings

. . .the kids can check our phones and the Nest Hub

to see who is at the door.”

Children’sinteractions with

smart home devices:

control door locks

Parents mentioned their children interacted with

a smart lock physically (e.g., by entering a password on a keypad) or remotely (e.g., through a

smart home app).

“They would be home for about an hour or two before my husband or I got home from work . . .They

were using a keypad to get in through our garage.”

Children’sinteractions with

smart home devices: other

Examples include using smart home devices to

set timers, having video calls with other people,

and any other instances that do not fall under the

codes above.

“We also have a Facebook Portal which we’ve used

to talk to people, and then he’s very familiar with

using FaceTime.”

Continued on next page

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Child Safety in the Smart Home 471:37

Code Description Example Quotes

How children access smart Children can access (or not) smart home devices “They do have tablets. They each have a Chromehome devices: through their phone / tablet or those owned by book . . . and an iPad. But none of those are intephone or tablet their parents. grated into smart homes and none of them have

apps to control anything in the house.”

How children access smart Children can access (or not) smart home de- “We have two Google Minis and a Google Home

home devices: vices through a smart home hub (e.g., Amazon Hub, which isthe one with the screen. So all the kids

smart home hub Echo Dot or Samsung SmartThings Hub) in their use the voice commands for things or even . . . set up

home. a timer for a timeout.”

How children access smart Children use voice commands (or not) to access “They like to hear the stories, and I don’t know how

home devices: smart home devices, mostly smart speakers. Can we stumbled upon it, but they’ll say like ‘Alexa, tell

voice commands be double coded with the interface of access. me a story’ when we’re just sitting around.”

How children access smart Children use physical controllers (or not) to ac- “If they really need to turn the light of and on

home devices: cess smart home devices such as smart switches, . . .they would use their voice or actually go to the

physical controllers buttons or TVs. Can be double coded with the in- switch and turn [it] of. They wouldn’t touch [the

terface of access. Google Nest Hub.]”

How children access smart Other interfaces or mechanisms children use (or “Both of our phones have passcodes on them, or fnhome devices: other not) to access smart home devices. gerprint or face ID . . . She is not authorized using

the biometric stuf and as far as I know, does not

know the passcodes.”

Sibling infuences: Children copy or learn from their siblings’ behav- “The younger one is just copying the older one

copy each other iors in interacting with smart home devices. . . .learning how to make it listen. So she’s trying

the ‘OK Google’ over and over again to try and get

it to respond, because she sees her sister doing that.”

Sibling infuences: Children compete for ownership, fght for turns, “Sometimes our older son gets annoyed with the

conficting use or show conficting preferences in using smart other son if he keeps asking it to play the same song

home devices. . . .There’s confict about what music to listen to.

Our third child likes to listen to the same thing over

and over again. It gets on the older two’s nerves.”

Sibling infuences: other Other instances that show interactions or in- “It’ll happen sometimes when the younger one will

fuences between siblings in smart home usage, notice the older one playing [through the camera]

such as using smart home devices for pranking and say, ‘What’s he doing? . . .Is he playing with

or monitoring. my stuf?’ They will check on each other.”

Children’s reaction to Children follow or disobey rules given by parents “I think they understand it, and they trust us. They

parental rules about how they should use smart home devices. follow the rules a lot, to the point where they won’t

The focusis on children’sreactions, not the rule’s even watch movies with us that are maybe bordercontent. line.”

Table 4. Codebook on parents’ mental models and atitudes.

Code Description Example Quotes

Smart home purchase considerations: priceParents considered price in making the purchase,

e.g., going after cheap, cost-efective products or

avoiding expensive products.

“If you ever priced out blinds, it’s absurd . . .It may

be like $200 for a ruler shade . . . $800 for one window, and you’re dropping $1,000 just to put a smart

roller blind sheet on one window. That’s why I

haven’t rushed out to do that.”

Smart home purchase considerations: brandParents indicated they trust certain companies or

brands when making the purchase, orindicated if

they get a new product in the future, it’s because

they trust the manufacturer.

“My light switches are all Lutron, and I kind of

defaulted into that . . .I discovered that the Lutron

company has been doing home automation for

close to 30 years . . .As I expanded my system without awareness, I tried to use their products as much

as possible.”

Smart home purchase considerations: privacy

Parents considered the product’s privacy implications, e.g., buying the product with strong privacy protections for consumers or avoiding the

product due to privacy concerns.

“Number one is privacy. Despite the fact that I literally worked for one of the cloud companies, I do

not want them to have any of my data about how

we move around our home.”

Continued on next page

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471:38 Kaiwen Sun et al.

Code Description Example Quotes

Smart home purchase con- Parents considered the product’s security fea- “One of the biggest drivers for us doing any smart

siderations: security tures or benefts, e.g., buying the product since it home stuf is around . . . security in the home. In fact,

makes the home more secure or avoid the prod- oursmart home processstarted because I am so horuct due to security concerns. rifcally bad at remembering to lock doors.”

Smart home purchase con- Parents considered the product’s safety features “With the Apple Home Kitsystem framework, there

siderations: safety or benefts, e.g., buying the product because it en- are actually some security requirements baked into

hances home safety or is safe to use. Can be dou- that . . . So at least the Home Kit stuf gives me a

ble coded with security. sense of safety, that there is some security baselining supply to it by default.”

Smart home purchase considerations: compatibility

Smart home purchase considerations: reliability

Smart home purchase considerations: functionality

Parents considered the product’s compatibility

with their existing smart home system in making

the purchase.

Parents described considering whether the product is reliable and can work consistently over

time when making the purchase.

Parents described considering the product’s functions, features, or the potential convenience it

could bring to the home when making the

purchase. Examples of device features include

whether the device needs a particular network or

whether it relies on a hub to work.

“Integration into one or more of my existing platforms is pretty crucial; multiple platforms is a

bonus.”

“My highest priority is reliability. It has to work

basically 99.99% of the time. If an automation or

switch or something like that doesn’t work one time

out of 10, everybody in my house will hate it.”

“Now, I am more focused on functionality. Like,

does this solve a problem in the household? Does

this make things easier for the kids or for myself,

for my wife? What’s the cost associated with that?”

Smart home purchase considerations: ease of useParents considered whether the product is easy

to use for general users (not specifc to children)

in making the purchase.

“Number two is what people often refer to as the

wife acceptance factor . . .A less misogynistic version of that term would be like user experience

. . .User experience is absolutely critical.”

Smart home purchase considerations: children’s useParents described considering whether the product is useful for children, whether it’s easy to use

for children, whether children will be addicted to

or abuse it, etc. when making the purchase.

“As a parent . . .the parental controls or access controls would be something I would think about . . .Is

it something that I can use, but the kids can’t? Or

is it something that I can limit their access?”

Smart home purchase considerations: otherParents described considering other factors that

are not captured by the codes above in making

the purchase, such as the time required to set

up and confgure the device or their tendency to

make impulse purchases.

“The thing I really like about smart home stuf is

that smart homes move a lot slower than other tech

products like phones, and it feels a lot easier to invest in it . . .It shouldn’t have to be something that

you’re reinvesting in every three years.”

General concerns: privacy,

security, or safety

Parents described general, not children-specifc

concerns about smart homes regarding privacy,

security, orsafety aspects,such as no indoor cameras to protect the privacy of nannies or worries

about the device being hacked.

“We have more than one in-home employee. The

kids have a nanny, and there’s also a medical aid

that assists with one of my children . . .Out of respect for them, we don’t have our cameras inside

the home.”

General concerns: device

functionality

Parents described general, not children-specifc

concernsthat a smart home device does not work

as expected and malfunction situations could occur.

“The biggest problem with the doorbell is that it’s

[connected to] WiFi and it’s battery operated. And

the WiFi beats the battery up pretty quickly. So we

get like a couple days worth of doorbell operation

and then it’s done.”

Trust in smart home companiesParents described they trust a certain smart home

company or feel comfortable with using the company’s products.

“I can easily opt out of Siri sending those things

that it records. Apple has gone all the way to the

Supreme Court to defend an individual’s rights in

their own information, which makes me feel [it is]

at least somewhat more willing to be private than

the other companies.”

Distrust in smart home companies: trustParents described they distrust a certain smart

home company or feel uncomfortable with using

the company’s products.

“Facebook and Google and Amazon are all like,

‘Oh yeah, we’re taking great care of your kids!’ No,

you’re not. [It’s] very clear that you’re doing your

best, but the technology is not there yet.”

Perceived impacts on children: privacyParents described how the privacy implications

of smart home devices could impact their children, e.g., by causing information leaks or

chances of their children being spied on.

“I just don’t want someone seeing the kids . . .You

do hear horror stories of like talking to them over

the monitors and things. So I guess that’s a concern

of mine.”

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Child Safety in the Smart Home 471:39

Code Description Example Quotes

Perceived impacts on chil- Parents described how their children’s security “It’s nice to be able to monitor the kids when we’re

dren: security and safety and safety could be impacted when they use working or when we’re not around them . . . But

smart home devices, e.g., exposure to explicit, then I thought if there’s something like a security

scary, or child-inappropriate content. breach, then I’m sure someone else can access that

feed.”

Perceived impacts on chil- Parents described concerns about their children “YouTube kids is one thing that I’ve banned in the

dren: exposure to ads or being exposed to ads or profting content when house . . .It turns them into little addicts . . .He was

profting content using smart home devices. so fxated [that] the one or two times he used it,

it was just such a fght to get it away from him

. . .All those toy videos . . .What are these people really producing this content? It’s just for money.”

Perceived impacts on chil- Other potential impacts of smart home devices “I wonder, for the future, if they’re going to demand

dren: other on children as parents perceived, including both that everything is smart in houses for apartments

positive and negative cases. that they rent . . . That’s why we’re trying to keep

as much interaction [of] manual use as possible so

they don’t grow up thinking that they have to have

their smartphone to turn on the light.”

Leaving children with smart Parentssaid they would be comfortable with leav- “I’m confdent in their ability to generally operate

home alone: comfortable ing children alone with smart home tech. them correctly. I don’t have a lot of safety concerns

. . .mostly because I trust the kids . . .At this age,

they’re not going looking for anything inappropriate. They’re not trying to sneak anything past me

that’s dangerous.”

Leaving children with smart Parents said they would have concerns or reser- “Not yet . . .He’s nine . . . and like I said he’s proven

home alone: uncomfortable vations when leaving children alone with smart to be pretty responsible. I think that time is coming

home tech. really soon . . .I just want to make sure that he’s

ready for it.”

Existing features that Parents’ mentioning of any particular resources “The ability to . . .set hours when it just does not reenhance user experience or features about smart home tech that would spond is handy. So between eleven and seven . . . that

provide a positive user experience or help parents speaker will not listen to anyone except the adults.

better manage their children’s access. So that they can’t get up at two in the morning and

decide they really want to watch Paw Patrol.”

Existing features Specifc features mentioned by parentsthat make “To close the garage door, there’s a safety feature

that increase safety smart home tech safe for children to interact where for like 10 seconds the light in the garage

with. starts blinking and beeping, so that if someone is

under the garage door they would know someone

accidentally or intentionally is closing the garage

door.”

Existing features Specifc features mentioned by parentsthat make “Real danger starts to emerge with mechanical acthat decrease safety smart home tech unsafe for children to interact tion . . . Say we’re gonna have the door be motorized

with. and remote controllable, and you could have someone get their arm caught in it.”

Desired features Specifc features mentioned by parents that “I thought the switches around our house [would

would better help or protect their children as need] some form of programmable vocal feedback.

smart home users, improve the overall user expe- Like an LED that I can change the color of.”

rience, or help parents better manage what children can access.

Table 5. Codebook on parents’ behaviors.

Code Description Example Quotes

How parents access smart Parents described accessing (or not) smart home “I have a smartphone. The doorbell, if we want to,

home devices: devices through the apps on their phones or we can open up the Ring app to see through the

phone or tablet tablets. camera.”

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471:40 Kaiwen Sun et al.

Code Description Example Quotes

How parents access smart Parents described accessing (or not) smart home “ I piecemeal things together with Alexa, because

home devices: devices through a smart home hub (e.g., Amazon I’m assuming Amazon charges basically nothing,

smart home hub Echo Dot or Samsung SmartThings Hub) in their and it charges more to integrate into your apple

home. home system . . .I just kind of fdget around with

multiple apps that are kind of integrated to Alexa.”

How parents access smart Parents described using voice commands to ac- “Sometimes I’ll ask Siri to do something, where I

home devices: cess smart home devices. Can be double coded say, ‘play my list’ or ‘turn on my lights.’ It’ll say, ‘I

voice commands with the interface of access. don’t know who you’re talking about.’ Then I identify myself and then the automation will go and

run.”

How parents access smart Parents described using physical controllers (or “They don’t know how to do that . . .I just take care

home devices: not) to access smart home devices. Can be double of entering the pin number on it and open it.”

physical controllers coded with the interface of access.

Childproof smart home de- Parents described childproofng smart home de- “We didn’t put the devices in the kids’ rooms until

vices: yes vices when their children were young. after they were walking, just so that they wouldn’t

use the cord to . . . pull themselves up or anything

like that . . .Now all of the cords are wrapped up,

so there’s no [chance] that they can . . . hurt themselves.”

Childproof smart home de- Parents said they did not childproof smart home “No, our kids always listened. So we only childvices: no devices when their children were young or they proofed as needed. We put the knives up higher. We

could not remember doing it. had one baby gate . . . [But] we never had to childproof the smart devices. We were never really worried about it.”

Table 6. Codebook on parent-child interactions.

Code Description Example Quotes

Children’s involvement in

purchase decisions:

before purchase

Parents mentioned that they had talked to children before buying a smart home device that’s

intended for children or would involve children

when being used.

“If it particularly involves them, I want to double

check with them to make sure that the use case actually exists . . .like, ‘Hey, would you like this thing

in your room?”’

Children’s involvement in

purchase decisions:

after purchase

Parents mentioned that they would introduce the

device to children and explain rules of use after

making the purchase.

“We purchased it and set it up, thenwe talked about

it. We make the decisions frst. He’s really young

. . . and he’s going to want all the latest and greatest.”

Children’s involvement in

purchase decisions:

no involvement

Parents mentioned they did not involve children

at all before or after the purchase decision.

“The last time I bought [a smart home device]

. . .they were probably too young to have that conversation. I think if I did now, I probably would explain anyway.”

Conficts over smart home

use

Parents mentioned conficts or disagreements

they had with children in setting up and using

smart home devices (excluding conficts among

children themselves).

“They sometimes can get fxated on it . . .A very

common thing at dinners is like ‘All right, we’re

done.’ And I just pull the plug on the [Amazon Echo]

Show, and they’ll say ‘Oh you don’t have to unplug,

I’ll stop now. I really will.”’

Children copying parents’

behaviors

Parents mentioned their children would observe

how they interacted with smart home devices

and mimic such behaviors.

“Our son has just turned two, and he’ll basically try

to simulate or copy us . . .I always speak loudly and

clearly, so I kind of raise my voice and try to enunciate. Then he will copy me and will try to shout

the word ‘Alexa.”’

Education / guidance about

rules: screen time

Parents described eforts in communicating with

or educating their children about proper screen

time and not getting addicted to technologies.

“We’re cognizant that if it was up to them, they

would be on those things all the time. So we have

a cap of 30 minutes a day, then they have to earn

enough credits to be able to have that screen time

each day.”

Continued on next page

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Child Safety in the Smart Home 471:41

Code Description Example Quotes

Education / guidance about Parents described eforts in telling children what “We’ve also had conversations about not sharing

rules: privacy, security, or to watch out for regarding privacy, security, and that information and ‘don’t talk to strangers,’ but

safety safety in using smart home devices. on a really basic level.”

Education / guidance about Parents described eforts to help children feel “The thing where my son thinks is funny [is] to

rules: proper use more comfortable using smart home devices, turn of all the lights when someone else is going

form good habits or behaviors, or “do the right into that part of the house. I told him, ‘okay, that

thing.” was funny once, but we’re not going to keep doing

that.”’

Education / guidance about Other educational eforts from parents that are “We don’t have any rules in place right now. We’ve

rules: other not captured by the codes above. opted instead for sort of behind-the-scenes control

. . .I expect somewhere down the road, we will have

to introduce the concept of sharing especially when

it comes to what they want to watch.”

Mitigation strategies: Parents intentionally avoid telling their children “If he knew about [the thermostats], and if he knew

non-disclosure the existence of certain smart home devices or that he could control them, then he could because

features (including hiding certain apps from the there’s no way to prevent him from doing it. And

interface). so I just haven’t told him about that stuf.”

Mitigation strategies: forbid Parents didn’t give children access or forbade “If we had smart sprinklers, I obviously wouldn’t

access them to use certain devices such as thermostats give them access to things like that. It’s . . .what

and security alarms. The children would lose ac- they can do with that device that I’m more concess rather than have limited access (e.g., when cerned about.”

parental control features are implemented).

Mitigation strategies: DIY Parents discussed how they modifed smart home “I got motion sensors that trigger things depending

automations features to cater to children’s needs or make it on the time of day . . . For example, I have a sensor

difcult for children to abuse the system. that if you walk into the bathroom between midnight and 5:30 . . .it’ll turn the lights on for you.”

Mitigation strategies: use Parents mentioned using built-in parental con- “We have family [accounts] set up through Google

parental control features trol features on device or repurposing a feature that restrict some access on the smart speakers, and

for parental control purposes, such as automat- we flter out explicit videos.”

ically fltering explicit content and restricting

screen time to only certain hours.

Mitigation strategies: other Other mitigation strategies not mentioned in the “If she kept on wanting to listen to something, I

codes above, such as making the device hard to would say ‘no we’re not doing that right now.’ Then

reach and unplugging the device. I would hit the mute button on it so that even if she

kept asking, it wouldn’t respond.”

Changes as children grow Parents discussed hypothetical scenarios in “To me, I can’t control what they’re going to downup which their children have grown up and they load when they’re 13, I’m going to have to let go.

would need to adapt their parenting accordingly, The only thing I can do . . . for the next fve years

e.g., by limiting or allowing the children’s access until they turn 13 is [to] instill in them this sort of

to diferent devices. natural skepticism.”

Received April 2021 ; accepted July 2021

Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact., Vol. 5, No. CSCW2, Article 471. Publication date: October 2021.