Why context and culture matter in youth online safety

Hello world and welcome to the podcast for educators passionate about computing and digital making. I'm James Robinson, Senior Learning Manager here at the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and this is the final episode released to accompany the latest issue of Hello World magazine. This issue explores online safety and security, asking what we mean by those terms and how we can better teach the skills that young people will need to use computers effectively, safely and responsibly.

In today's episode, we're talking to Doctor Karla Badillo-Urquiola, a fellow at Notre Dame University in the US, to discuss her research in youth online safety. So I'll hand over to my colleague Bobby to introduce our guest.

Hello, I'm Doctor Bobby Whyte a research scientist at the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Today I'm delighted to be joined by Doctor Karla Badillo-Urquiola. Welcome to the Hello World podcast, Karla

Hi. Thank you for having me. I'm super excited for this.

So before we get into it, Karla could you briefly introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about the research that you do?

Yeah. My name is Doctor Karla Badillo-Urquiola and I am an assistant professor at the University of Notre Dame in the Computer Science and Engineering department. My research is in the discipline of human computer interaction and the I focus on adolescent online safety. Specifically online safety of youth and vulnerable populations and really looking at how we can design technologies for their lived experiences.

Thanks Karla. That sounds like really important and timely research. Can I ask what motivated you to focus your research on online safety and vulnerable youth?

Yeah. So, I am an interesting computer scientist. Because my background is actually in psychology. So my bachelor's degree, was in psych and then my master's and my PhD is when I sort of transitioned into the engineering and computer science world. So that has a lot to do with how I think about my research in a more disciplinary way.

So a lot of times people look at my research and say, oh, are you a social scientist? And I'm like, well, not entirely, but yes, I am both a social scientist and an engineer. But really, what motivates, sort of my passion for my work is, the experiences that I had as a child. So, my childhood was a little bit, I'd say complicated, or tumultuous in some ways.

Like, my mom was a single parent. By the age of nine, I think, I had been through three parental divorces. I had also experienced domestic violence at home. Also situations around drug addiction, like parental drug addiction, things like that. And so, looking back at my childhood, I question a lot, like, wow, how did I become the person that I am today?

Because I consider myself, successful, and and thriving. And so my research really focuses on areas of resilience, like how do we build resilience in youth and how can we leverage tools like technology or social media, to help them? I also was in the generation where technology really did a boom, right? So like, I was growing with social media and with technology.

And so I think that also really helped me a lot in finding social support networks and things like that and building community. And so, that's really what motivates my research is how can I get youth in a position, similar to where I am, like where they feel that they're successful, they feel that they're thriving, they feel that they're living their best life.

Do you feel that growing up before and after these tools and platforms emerged gives you a unique perspective when researching online safety?

Definitely. I mean I remember dial up as a kid, sitting there, like with the little sounds and just waiting for your computer to connect or your internet to connect. So I definitely think that does shape the way in which I think about technology as well. So being in human computer interaction, we focus a lot on the impact of technology on humans.

And so, knowing life like before the internet or before technology, and sort of the activities that we would do when we were bored or when we got tired from watching too much TV or stuff like that, like I think also impacts the way in which I think about design and like designing for certain experiences that you want to have online, like human connection, is a really big aspect of what we're talking nowadays with, like AI and different emerging technologies, like, how do we maintain those human connections and human dignity?

Things like that. I think that really does shape the way in which I think about technology and think about interactions.

You spoke a little bit about defining, am I a social scientist? Am I an engineer? How do you feel that kind of interdisciplinary perspective plays in your work?

I have this sense of like when I was growing up, I liked a lot of things. And so, you know, when you get to college, they typically make you decide on one track, or like one major. And so I was always the kid that was like, do I have to choose one?

I'm a very indecisive person. And so I decided on psychology because I was just really interested in understanding the human psyche and why do people make certain decisions and why do they act in certain ways? I realised that, you know, psychology impacts a lot of different disciplines. And then I took a human factors psychology course, which is where I really dug deep into the intersection between engineering and psychology.

Human Factors Psychology is all about using psychological principles to understand human performance and safety. And so in that course is really where they started talking about being an interdisciplinary researcher and like, communicating across disciplines and and that innovation requires collaboration. And so I think that's where my eyes kind of like glistened and and I was like, that's what I want to be. Like

I want to be an interdisciplinary researcher. Like, I don't want to have limits. I want to be able to answer hard questions and collaborate with people. And so, when I went on to my PhD, I entered an interdisciplinary program. And so, really, when I describe myself, I talk about it as a spectrum. And so I say I'm in the middle of the spectrum.

If you have computer science where it's like all the theory and quantum computing on one side, and then you have all the psychologists and sociologists and even humanities on the other side, like, I'm really in the middle where I try to connect both worlds and try to answer questions that require both the knowledge of an engineer, but also the knowledge of a sociologist or a psychologist.

That's great, a happy medium.

Yeah, exactly. A happy medium. And I try to instil that in my students as well.

You recently co-authored an article in the Hello World magazine about online safety research in the Global South. Can you tell us a little bit about that research and what you found?

Yeah, so I've been doing online safety research since I started doing research, which was over a decade ago. And one of the things that I had realised was that a lot of the research and a lot of the conversations around adolescent online safety and things like policy, were coming from two specific regions.

So I would say, Northern America, like the US and then Europe were sort of the two biggest players in the online safety world. But, you know, our world is so big. And so one of the things that my students and I were really interested in was, you know, how is online safety being studied? Is it being studied?

Are people interested in understanding risk and safety in other contexts? And so we did a systematic literature review trying to uncover, specifically in the area of human computer interaction, what type of work's been done. And what we found is that there has been work done, but not as much as we'd like. So we found that there was a lot of work being done outside of Asia.

But then when you looked at regions or other geographical regions like Africa or Latin America, there was very scarce work. So I think if I recall, there was only like maybe a couple of papers in Latin America and a couple of papers in Africa. And so one of the things that our work or our paper sort of emphasises is, you know, looking at these papers that have been published, they look at safety very differently than what the typical narrative is.

We found that individualistic cultures focus more on aspects of resilience and youth autonomy, where we push the design of tech towards trying to give youth more authority in their behaviours. Whereas, in collectivistic cultures, we found that a lot of the research was saying that they value more community oriented values.

So looking at privacy and safety through a community lens where certain behaviours or interactions that youth have online, impact the way in which their families are also perceived. And so, and so culture really dictates what types of risks can be discussed, how we discuss them, how youth should even be behaving or how these risks can even be acknowledged or acted upon.

And so our paper focussed on that, on trying to identify, okay, how is safety and risk being, studied and looked at from a global perspective and from different regions? And how is that different from the current narrative? And what should we do about it?

Thank you. I reread the article again last night, a light bedtime reading, and it seemed like culture was an important factor that you touched upon. And so I wonder whether you could speak a little bit about how culture influences how online harm is understood, but also how it unfolds in different contexts?

A lot of my research is now moving towards looking at online safety from a global perspective, and really tackling that question that you just asked, of well how does culture, and even, other social factors impact the way in which we should design for safety? And so recently, one of my students is from Nigeria. And so he was really interested in, well, you know, how do youth in Nigeria think about safety?

And one of the things that we realised is that for them, adults are really an authoritative figure in how they think about safety and how they interact online. And so, a lot of times youth might be scared if they run into a problem online, or let's say they knew they weren't supposed to do something, but then they did it and then it turned into a negative experience.

Sometimes they prefer not to share or go to their parents and tell them because, like I said, it doesn't just impact them as an individual, it impacts their community and like their family. And so, they were saying that they don't feel, or they don't want their behaviours to taint their family's image.

So then they look for support or guidance in other areas. But then, you know, the narrative in online safety is that parental control and parental mediation is the way to address online safety. But then if youth aren't going to their parents, then you know, that mediation is not going to work. Also, I think there was a paper from, I want to say Vietnam, where they talked specifically about risk, how there are certain like risks around gender or sexuality that, you know, you're not allowed to address.

Which also makes it a little bit more complicated because we know that, you know, there's a lot of risks around, like sexting or even sex trafficking. And, there's been a lot of discussion, around sexual grooming and things like that where, you know, if these are things that we can't talk about because they're taboo, then like, how do we address them?

This is really sensitive work as well. But those are sort of examples on where, you know, one word can be interpreted in different ways just depending on what part of the world you're at.

So in the paper you also talk a little bit about education and how it serves as a mechanism for thinking about how we inform youth about online safety, but also, build those resilience skills and self-regulation skills in online spaces. And I wonder whether you could speak a little bit about what you found in relation to education and how it differs,

depending on cultural context.

So education in the sense that, you know, awareness is really important, like just being aware that people have different values, people have different ways of seeing the world. And so when we're talking about things like how to keep someone safe, our own definition of safe might be different than the person we're trying to help. And so that's also one of the reasons why it's important to educate youth

and I'd even say parents and other adult stakeholders, on the spectrum of views on how safety is perceived.

Another point you bring up in the paper, which I think is quite important, is access and how it's context dependent. And so I wonder whether you could speak a little bit about how access influences or affects youth online safety.

You know, a lot of factors around like socioeconomic status or even around values or just, familial context or like, your home setting, impacts the type of access that you have to devices. In some families, or in some contexts, there's this image of, you know, everybody has their own device, where it could take on a more again, individualistic, sort of, value where, you know, everybody has the right to their own device.

But then in other contexts, we see that, there's a lot of sharing of devices, especially when, you know, there isn't the economic means for everybody to have their own device. And so the interactions change, right? So for example, I do a lot of work with youth in foster care. And these teens can live in different types of home settings.

So, they're not always living in a two parent household. Sometimes they live, what they call, in group homes, where there's staff members and then there's multiple youth living in the same home, and sometimes in group homes, devices are banned, like, they're not allowed to have phones. And so I would say, you know, that also impacts the access that youth have, because sometimes they'll get access at school, but then they don't have it at home or they get access through their friends.

And so, I would say that that's another sort of challenge in itself of looking at the different social factors or cultural factors that impact access.

That's really interesting. Thank you. Given everything we've spoken about so far, so sort of culture, education, access, it feels like there's quite a lot of variation in the context that we're speaking about, do you think there could be a universal approach to online safety?

That is such a great question, and I would say technically, no. But, I would say it's not an absolute no. So in our research, there's a lot of discussion around safety by design. So what that means is in the design of technologies, we should be thinking about privacy and safety. And so, especially when we're designing for youth interactions, things like default privacy settings should be universal.

Where a youth makes an account and it's automatically private, right? So I would say like those types of things could probably be universal. But when we start talking about policy at like the state level or countries, or even, like universal or global policies, I think it would be very difficult to implement a universal policy around youth safety or just safety in general because people have different value systems.

Countries have different norms, different ways in which people interact, different ways that people think about safety. And so I don't think, like a policy that's going really well in, let's say Australia, which just had their social media ban. I don't think it would be the same implementing it maybe in the US or in Latin America or in Nigeria per se.

And so I think it would make it very difficult to have a universal policy. But I think, also, we should have universal conversations around how we should, address safety. Because I think we should be addressing safety through different lenses and different ways. Like, I think we should be addressing it through design. I think we should be addressing it through education.

I think we should be addressing it through policy. Etc., etc., etc.. But but I definitely think that it should be context specific.

You've touched a little bit upon my next question, which is we've talked a little bit about a one size fits all approach not being appropriate for all contexts. And yet these online platforms are global, right? They operate on a global scale. And so my question is, where do you think the responsibility lies? Do you think it's a shared responsibility?

Do you think it's up to government? Do you think it's up to the platforms themselves, or does it fall on individuals and their communities?

I think the easy answer for a lot of people is to say, oh, the platforms should have the responsibility. And I don't think it's that simple. I do think that platforms should have responsibility. But I also think, you know, governments have responsibilities. I think, parents have responsibilities, teachers have responsibilites. I really do think it's a community approach.

So in my, and I might get a little bit researcher now in my answer, but in my research, I adopt the social ecological framework of Bronfenbrenner, which says that people, specifically youth, are embedded within social systems. Where we have the individual system, which is ourselves, that we have our own ways of thinking, being.

We have our identity that has different characteristics. But then we are embedded within a micro system, which could be a family, a neighbourhood. We then have like community aspects where we're in a school, we're also at the societal level, like we are governed by, you know, policies and laws. Media plays a big role also.

We have there's the aspect of time. As we grow, different life transitions impact the way in which we interact in the world. And then now technology also impacts, right. And so for me, all of those different systems have responsibility towards how we think about safety and keeping a person or a child safe.

And so I do think it's a shared responsibility. And that's why I also said, like, I think we should have more global conversations where, you know, people at all of these different levels should be at a table discussing, well, how do we address this? And also sharing like, you know, in your contacts or in your area, how do you think about this?

And so I do think it's not just one person is responsible, which is why I also disagree with this idea of parental mediation being the sole strategy for keeping youth safe.

You've touched on how some countries are introducing things like social media bans. So Australia, the example you gave, but also certain countries, Denmark, the UK, Austria are sort of consulting on it at the moment. Do you feel these strategies are a step in the right direction, or do you think they ignore some of the nuance of how young people are engaging in online spaces?

I, based off of my research, believe that it does erase the nuance of the complexity of the situation. So in previous research that I've conducted and that also my advisor, who is also a big scholar in this area, has done, we've actually done work around the different, mediation strategies that exist, and consistently restricting technology use has been shown to create more tensions and more negative experiences for youth.

Because, one, it breaks the parent youth trust relationship. Because youth question their parents of, well why? Like why can't I use this? And then parents don't actually have a strong answer. Oh, it's just to keep you safe. But that doesn't explain to the youth of like, well, why is it dangerous or like, what are the experiences that you're trying to keep me away from?

Or like, in the future, like, when I do get this technology, like, is there going to be training in how to use it, or are you just going to give it to me and then just let me roll with it? Like, a lot of the metaphors that I use for this is typically, at least in the US,

So the driving age is, for a learner's permit is 16. And then when you turn 18, you have your full license. Those couple of years between getting your learner's permit and getting your full license, is a training period, right? Like you don't just hand over the keys to your Mercedes to your child. You teach them, hey, this is where the gas pedal is.

You know, this is where the brake is. These are your turning lights. This is the emergency brake. This is when you use an emergency brake, right? You know, we break things down for teens when we're teaching them how to use a car, but we don't do that with cell phones, tablets, TVs, you know. All we do is say, you know, you can't use this until the age of X, and then when the age of X comes around, you just hand it over, and then you're expecting them to know how to use it.

Well, they don't just magically know how to use the phone. I think that really is why it's so nuanced and why some of these policies just are kind of erasing those nuances because it's not straightforward. And I think it's going to require new ways of thinking about policy as well.

You spoke a little bit there about what we might call parent centric approaches to online safety, so things like monitoring apps. But in your paper you speak about teen centric approaches as almost like a counterpoint. And so I wonder whether you could kind of define what you mean by teen centric approaches to online safety and what that looks like in practice?

Could you give us a practical example?

Yeah. So I would start by saying that my research is youth centric. So what I mean by youth centric is that we bring in youth into the conversation. So a lot of times when I'm studying safety, I'm studying it through the lived experiences of youth. So we do interview studies with them, we do surveys, we even have them participate in the design process.

If we are trying to prototype a new feature or a new tool, we typically bring in youth early in the design process to get their ideas of, you know, how should this look like? What should the features do? Like what should they be addressing? You know, when we’re building a policy or when we’re trying to think about ways of how to address a problem?

We need to bring in the stakeholders, right? Well, the biggest stakeholder in youth online safety are the youth, because they're the ones being impacted. I mean, parents and adults are secondary stakeholders, but the primary stakeholders are the youth themselves. You know, I did a study, before TikTok became TikTok, it was musical.ly, and I did a study with children between the ages of seven years old and eleven years old, trying to really understand how can we build features for youth.

And this was around the time that the COPPA act, which is the policy of like, children under the age of 13 aren't allowed on social media. And so my research was really trying to tackle, well, one, are these youth use using these platforms. How are they using the platforms. And then what do they envision around safety.

And what we found was, you know, these youth were using the platforms. They knew the platforms better than us. It was so funny because one of the scenarios, I think it was like a cyberbullying scenario, and one of the children was like, doctor KB that's not how TikTok works. And they were like, they said, you know, if your profile is on private, like then this doesn't happen or whatever.

And so like I was so surprised because, you know, I was not a musical.ly user or a TikTok user. And so for me, it was such a surprise at like how well-versed these kids were at the app. And then we went on to like, doing the envisioning activity, and they envisioned this stranger danger button and what they said was, you know, I just wish there was a button that I could click that would connect me to different adult stakeholders, that if I felt that I needed more support, that I could report it.

They're like, I want the app to take a screenshot of my activity and send it to the police. Or if this is my classmate, you know, I want a way to contact my teacher. They wanted, basically, ways to connect with different adult stakeholders depending on the context of the conversation and the context of the risk.

And so for me, that was very eye opening because I'm like, these are seven to eleven year olds. They're not even teenagers yet. They're like maybe pre-teens or even just children. And so just having them even think in that way is sort of what pushed me more towards this idea of, you know, we should be engaging youth.

And we should be engaging them in conversations where adults can get at the same level and try to understand, well, what are what are the youth thinking? How are you thinking about this scenario? How are you thinking about the behaviours. And then you know, if we see that the youth, are thinking about it, maybe in a way that can put them in more harm, then that's a conversation we can have with them.

Right? And that's also a way where we can see where we need to intervene. But if we're seeing that these youth are saying, hey, you know, this is the way that I'm thinking about this situation and this is how I would act and, and like, and we see that, you know, oh, they actually navigate these types of situations really well.

Then maybe those are the types of situations where we don't need to intervene. And so, that's what I mean by youth centred and youth engaged. It’s really bringing in the conversation between stakeholders. And that is between adults and youth.

That's great. Thank you. It seems that foster care is also an important part of your research. So I wonder whether you could speak a little bit about how you've researched youth online safety in a kind of foster context as well.

So actually, my area of expertise, when I did my PhD and after has been centred on online safety, for youth in out of home situations or in foster care situations. And really, this research started with an interview study with foster parents, really trying to understand how is technology mediated within the home.

And what we found was that there was a lot of tensions because foster parents, even though they're charged with the care of these children, they're not actually given the authority of a parent. So they don't have full custody over these children and so there's a lot of decisions that they are not allowed to make.

And so that creates a tension because some parents also have biological children in the home and so they often feel like they're treating their biological children differently than their foster children. When in their eyes, they're all their children, right? And they want to treat them all the same. And so at the time I was doing this work in Florida and in Florida, there's a normalcy act, which is basically this idea that foster youth should be given a normal life.

So they should be treated just like every other youth. And they shouldn't be treated distinctly. However, when it comes to technology, they are treated differently because a lot of these youth are, because of past experiences, are restricted from using phones or restricted from using the internet. And nowadays, you know, I think in the US, the number is like 98 or over 90% of youth have a smartphone.

And are almost constantly online. And so, the foster parents were really struggling with, you know, I want to give my child this phone or, you know, I want to treat them normal. But whenever I give them a phone or if I allow them to go on the internet, you know, negative things happen or, you know, their case plan doesn't allow me to. And so that kind of sparked this interest in trying to really understand, well, how do we design for these contexts, or these different situations where some of these youth also aren't in, like I said, in homes where there's an engaged

parent. And so are there alternative ways of looking at safety through maybe more community oriented lenses? And so that's made me also bring in more stakeholders like caseworkers or guardian ad litems. Even the courtroom, right? Because a lot of these youth, their cases are dictated by a judge. And so all of these adult stakeholders in their life, I think, have some sort of role and so understanding, to what extent do they have a responsibility around safety and can we design technologies to support those roles?

Thanks, Karla. It seems like this kind of foster angle to your research is quite a unique, but also a very important way of thinking about this issue and this topic. So thanks for that. Well, Doctor Karla, thank you so much for joining us on the Hello World podcast.

Thank you for having me.

Thanks to Bobby and Karla for that fascinating conversation. If you'd like to read the article that inspired today's episode, you can find it in the latest issue of Hello World magazine, which is out now. And whilst you're at it, if you haven't already, head to helloworld.cc to subscribe, explore our back issues and listen to more episodes. What are you waiting for?

Until next time, goodbye!