Who Is More Trustworthy, Alexa or Mom?: Children’s Selective Trust in a Digital Age

Abstract

Children obtain much of their early knowledge informally through first-hand observations (e.g., children as little scientists). Though the “little scientist” approach has a strong history within cognitive development, a newer perspective suggests it is not only independent observation of the environment through which children learn but also by posing questions to trustworthy individuals around them. Now, in a digital age, children can inform their understanding of the world by asking questions not only of adults but also of digital agents who are able to scour the internet and provide quick responses to children’s questions. As a result of voicesearch functionalities typically present in digital voice assistants (DVAs; e.g., Alexa), children can query the internet at an earlier age, sidestepping literacy-based prerequisite skills needed for traditional computer search engines. This review examines several child-level and technology-level factors that may influence children’s trust in DVAs relative to human informants. No work has combined these lines of inquiry in a way that has extended social (i.e., confidence, benevolence) and epistemic characteristics (i.e., accuracy, expertise) used in human-to-human interaction to digital voice assistant-to-human interaction. Results suggest DVS do not yet meet children’s expectations for a trustworthy informant, providing implications to improve DVA functionality for young users.