Our business, not the robot’s: family conversations about privacy with social robots in the home

Abstract

The targeted use of social robots for the family demands a better understanding of multiple stakeholders’ privacy concerns, including those of parents and children. Through a co-learning workshop which introduced families to the functions and hypothetical use of social robots in the home, we present preliminary evidence from 6 families that exhibits how parents and children have different comfort levels with robots collecting and sharing information across different use contexts. Conversations and booklet answers reveal that parents adopted their child’s decision in scenarios where they expect children to have more agency, such as in cases of homework completion or cleaning up toys, and when children proposed what their parents found to be acceptable reasoning for their decisions. Families expressed relief when they shared the same reasoning when coming to conclusive decisions, signifying an agreement of boundary management between the robot and the family. In cases where parents and children did not agree, they rejected a binary, either-or decision and opted for a third type of response, reflecting skepticism, uncertainty and/or compromise. Our work highlights the benefits of involving parents and children in child- and family-centered research, including parental abilities to provide cognitive scaffolding and personalize hypothetical scenarios for their children.