Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Human Factors
Date Submitted: Jan 19, 2025
Date Accepted: Dec 16, 2025
Adolescent Perceptions of an Online Safety Chatbot: Survey Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Adolescents face a variety of potential harms in the online environment, including exposure to distressing illegal material, cyberbullying, image-based abuse, and ‘sextortion’. Various agencies provide on-demand helpline and information services for children and adolescents to support them with navigating online (and offline) harms.
Objective:
This study examined whether a chat-based conversational agent (chatbot) might be a useful additional tool for meeting the needs of adolescents at risk from online harms. We developed a prototype chatbot – including both conversational and menu-driven user options – and evaluated users’ trust in the system. In this context, trust relates to perceptions of the system’s usability and the value of the information/support it provides.
Methods:
Participants (n = 224; mean age =16.8 years) interacted with the chatbot systems and evaluated the systems in terms of user trust: perceived usability and utility (i.e., relevance of support resources provided).
Results:
Most participants (63%) showed a willingness to click on the chatbots’ recommended support links. Participants with higher trust in the chatbots were more likely to click the links for recommended support services (BF10 > 100), and participants who clicked the links, compared with those who did not, reported higher rates of positive attitudes towards their decision (extreme evidence, BF10 > 100). The conversational and menu-driven chatbots differed little in perceived trust or effectiveness.
Conclusions:
Chatbots represent a promising additional tool to help adolescents access mental health related support services and navigate online harms. However, establishing trust is critical. Clinical Trial: NA
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.