Clicks, Screens, and Control: Dark Patterns in Teen Privacy and Safety Settings on Social Media

Abstract

Dark patterns in social media privacy and safety settings can quietly shape what teenagers see as possible when they try to protect themselves online. While prior work has documented manipulative design in individual features or single platforms, we know less about how privacy and safety controls compare across the services teens use every day. This paper presents an expert evaluation of seven privacy and safety management tasks on four social media platforms. For each task, we mapped task flows to complete each task, identifying the number of clicks and screens required. We then analyzed these flows using the dark patterns ontology to identify where setting discoverability was compromised or unnecessary friction was employed. All settings employed dark patterns on at least one platform, and some settings, such as account deletion and managing in-app notifications, were particularly onerous. We argue that safety settings often look like control, but the presence of dark patterns makes the settings difficult to use and easy to circumvent. Building on our findings, we outline implications for the evaluation and design of teen-focused privacy and safety features and identify opportunities for policy intervention.