Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting
Date Submitted: Mar 21, 2024
Date Accepted: Aug 5, 2024
Exploring the feasibility and acceptability of technological interventions to prevent adolescents’ exposure to online pornography: qualitative research
ABSTRACT
Background:
Background:
Amidst growing concern over the potential negative impact of pornography on young people's health and wellbeing, policymakers are looking towards new and emerging technological concepts for unexplored solutions, including AI and facial recognition.
Objective:
Objective:
This study sought to explore and ideate emerging technological interventions that are feasible, acceptable, and effective in preventing and controlling the exposure of young people to online pornographic material.
Methods:
Methods:
We conducted a series of qualitative co-design workshops with both adult (n=8, 32-53 years) and adolescent participants (n=4, 15-17 years) to ideate potential technological interventions that are feasible, acceptable, and effective at preventing and controlling the exposure of young people to online pornographic material. A story stem methodology was used to explore participants’ attitudes towards two unique technological prototypes.
Results:
Results:
Participants expressed a generally favourable view of the proposed technological concepts but remained unconvinced of their overall utility and effectiveness at preventing the intentional viewing of pornography by young people. Age-appropriate parent-child conversations remained participants’ preferred approach to mitigating potential harms from pornographic material, with parents also expressing a desire for more educational resources to help them better navigate these discussions. User privacy and data security was a primary concern for participants, particularly surrounding the use and collection of biometric data.
Conclusions:
Conclusions:
This study highlights the potential for new and emerging technologies to be useful tools in preventing the accidental exposure of young people to online pornographic material. However, participants remained less convinced of their ability to avert intentional viewing, with substantial concerns regarding technological efficacy, adaptability, and user privacy. Further co-design and prototype refinement is needed to better understand user acceptability and comfortability of these new technological interventions, alongside additional research exploring socio-cultural differences in information needs and user experiences.
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Copyright
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