dark patterns; deceptive design; manipulative design; teenagers; user experience; Dark pattern; Deceptive design; Design practice; E- commerces; Manipulative design; Network video; Semi structured interviews; Teenager; Users' experiences; Video-games; Software
Abstract :
[en] Manipulative and deceptive design practices are ubiquitous, impacting technology users in various ways across several domains. Certain groups are likely more susceptible to these impacts but have not received sufcient attention yet. In this paper, we seek to characterize one such understudied group, describing teenagers’ experience of manipulative design. We conducted semi-structured interviews with six teenagers between 15 and 17 years old, to understand their daily interactions with manipulative designs in three contexts: social networks, video games, and e-commerce. Using refexive thematic analysis, our fndings describe how risk is a shared experience for teenagers, and interrogate how teenagers’ personal and social context shape their experience of risk. We relate our fndings to existing knowledge about how the general population is impacted by manipulative design practices and consider opportunities to further understand and support the experiences of teenagers and other vulnerable groups.
Disciplines :
Computer science
Author, co-author :
Chamorro, Lorena Sánchez; University of Luxembourg, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg
LALLEMAND, Carine ; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences (FHSE) > Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences (DBCS) > Cognitive Science and Assessment
Gray, Colin M. ; Indiana University, Bloomington, United States
External co-authors :
yes
Language :
English
Title :
“My Mother Told Me These Things are Always Fake” — Understanding Teenagers’ Experiences with Manipulative Designs
Publication date :
July 2024
Event name :
Designing Interactive Systems Conference
Event place :
Copenhagen, Dnk
Event date :
01-07-2024 => 05-07-2024
Audience :
International
Main work title :
Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, DIS 2024
ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (ACM SIGCHI)
Funding text :
We want to express our gratitude to the participants that participated in this study for their generosity. We also want to thank the members of \u201CLa Rueca Asociaci\u00F3n Social y Cultural\u201D for opening their doors to this collaboration and allowing us to learn from them. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their detailed constructive feedback, and Joshua Dawson and Sophie Doublet for their support in proofreading the manuscript. This research is funded by the Luxembourg National Research Fund FNR grant IS/14717072 Deceptive Patterns Online (Decepticon).
Simone Avolicino, Marianna Di Gregorio, Fabio Palomba, Marco Romano, Monica Sebillo, and Giuliana Vitiello. 2022. AI-Based Emotion Recognition to Study Users’ Perception of Dark Patterns. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 13516. Springer International Publishing, Cham, 185–203. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17615-9_13
Carlos Bermejo Fernandez, Dimitris Chatzopoulos, Dimitrios Papadopoulos, and Pan Hui. 2021. This Website Uses Nudging: MTurk Workers’ Behaviour on Cookie Consent Notices. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 5, CSCW2 (Oct 2021), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1145/3476087
European Data Protection Board. 2022. Guidelines 3/2022 on Dark patterns in Social Media Platform Interfaces: How to Recognise and Avoid Them.
Kerstin Bongard-Blanchy, Arianna Rossi, Salvador Rivas, Sophie Doublet, Vincent Koenig, and Gabriele Lenzini. 2021.”I am Defnitely Manipulated, Even When I am Aware of it. It’s Ridiculous!” - Dark Patterns from the End-User Perspective. In Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2021. ACM, Virtual Event USA, 763–776. https://doi.org/10.1145/3461778.3462086
Ida Borberg, Rene Hougaard, Willard Rafnsson, and Oksana Kulyk. 2022. “So I Sold My Soul”: Efects of Dark Patterns in Cookie Notices on End-User Behavior and Perceptions. Workshop on Usable Security and Privacy (USEC) (2022), 11.
Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke. 2013. Successful Qualitative Research. A Practical Guide for Beginners. SAGE.
Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke. 2021. One size fts all? What counts as quality practice in (refexive) thematic analysis? Qualitative Research in Psychology 18, 3 (Jul 2021), 328–352. https://doi.org/10.1080/14780887.2020.1769238
Urie Bronfenbrenner. 1979. The ecology of human development: experiments by nature and design. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Jie Cai, Donghee Yvette Wohn, and Guo Freeman. 2019. Who Purchases and Why?: Explaining Motivations for In-game Purchasing in the Online Survival Game Fortnite. In Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play. ACM, Barcelona Spain, 391–396. https://doi.org/10.1145/3311350.3347196
Annette Cerulli-Harms, Marlene Münsch, Christian Thorun, Frithjof Michalsen, and Pierre Hausemer. 2020. Loot boxes in online games and their efect on consumers, in particular young consumers. Policy Department for Economic, Scientifc and Quality of Life Policies. European Parliament., 56. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document/IPOL_STU(2020)652727
Akash Chaudhary, Jaivrat Saroha, Kyzyl Monteiro, Angus G. Forbes, and Aman Parnami. 2022. “Are You Still Watching?”: Exploring Unintended User Behaviors and Dark Patterns on Video Streaming Platforms. In Designing Interactive Systems Conference. ACM, Virtual Event Australia, 776–791. https://doi.org/10.1145/3532106.3533562
Martin Johannes Dechant, Max Valentin Birk, and Kathrin Gerling. 2023. Vulnerability and Play: Exploring the Mundane Ways in Which Games Might Harm Players. In Companion Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play. ACM, Stratford ON Canada, 225–227. https://doi.org/10.1145/3573382.3616048
Linda Di Geronimo, Larissa Braz, Enrico Fregnan, Fabio Palomba, and Alberto Bacchelli. 2020. UI Dark Patterns and Where to Find Them: A Study on Mobile Applications and User Perception. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, Honolulu HI USA, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376600
Daniella DiPaola and Ryan Calo. 2024. Socio-Digital Vulnerability. (Jan. 2024). http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4686874
M. Dreier, K. Wölfing, E. Duven, S. Giralt, M.E. Beutel, and K.W. Müller. 2017. Free-to-play: About addicted Whales, at risk Dolphins and healthy Minnows. Monetarization design and Internet Gaming Disorder. Addictive Behaviors 64 (Jan. 2017), 328–333. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2016.03.008
Dan Fitton and Janet C. Read. 2019. Creating a Framework to Support the Critical Consideration of Dark Design Aspects in Free-to-Play Apps. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children. ACM, Boise ID USA, 407–418. https://doi.org/10.1145/3311927.3323136
ACM. Association for Computing Machinery. 2023. Words matter: Alternatives for charged terminology in the computing profession. https://www.acm.org/diversity-inclusion/words-matter
Guo Freeman, Karen Wu, Nicholas Nower, and Donghee Yvette Wohn. 2022. Pay to Win or Pay to Cheat: How Players of Competitive Online Games Perceive Fairness of In-Game Purchases. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 6, CHI PLAY (Oct 2022), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1145/3549510
Erin Gibson, Mark D. Grifths, Filipa Calado, and Andrew Harris. 2022. The relationship between videogame micro-transactions and problem gaming and gambling: A systematic review. Computers in Human Behavior 131 (June 2022), 107219. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2022.107219
Brendan Gough and Anna Madill. 2012. Subjectivity in psychological science: From problem to prospect. Psychological Methods 17, 3 (Sept. 2012), 374–384. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029313
Colin M Gray, Jingle Chen, Shruthi Sai Chivukula, and Liyang Qu. 2021. End User Accounts of Dark Patterns as Felt Manipulation. In Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact, Vol. 5. 26.
Colin M. Gray, Yubo Kou, Bryan Battles, Joseph Hoggatt, and Austin L. Toombs. 2018. The Dark (Patterns) Side of UX Design. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, Montreal QC Canada, 14. https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3174108
Colin M Gray, Thomas Mildner, and Nataliia Bielova. 2023. Temporal Analysis of Dark Patterns: A Case Study of a User’s Odyssey to Conquer Prime Membership Cancellation through the “Iliad Flow”. (Sept. 2023). arXiv:2309.09635 [cs.HC] http://arxiv.org/abs/2309.09635
Colin M. Gray, Lorena Sanchez Chamorro, Ike Obi, and Ja-Nae Duane. 2023. Mapping the Landscape of Dark Patterns Scholarship: A Systematic Literature Review. In Designing Interactive Systems Conference. ACM, Pittsburgh PA USA, 188–193. https://doi.org/10.1145/3563703.3596635
Colin M. Gray, Cristiana Santos, and Nataliia Bielova. 2023. Towards a Preliminary Ontology of Dark Patterns Knowledge. In Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, Hamburg Germany, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3585676
Paul Graßl, Hanna Schrafenberger, Frederik Zuiderveen Borgesius, and Moniek Buijzen. 2021. Dark and bright patterns in cookie consent requests. 3, 1 (2021), 38.
Nancy Greer, Cailem Murray Boyle, and Rebecca Jenkinson. 2022. Harms associated with loot boxes, simulated gambling and other in-game purchases in video games: a review of the evidence.
Johanna Gunawan, Amogh Pradeep, David Chofnes, Woodrow Hartzog, and Christo Wilson. 2021. A Comparative Study of Dark Patterns Across Web and Mobile Modalities. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 5, CSCW2 (Oct 2021), 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1145/3479521
Johanna Gunawan, Cristiana Santos, and Irene Kamara. 2022. Redress for Dark Patterns Privacy Harms? A Case Study on Consent Interactions. In Proceedings of the 2022 Symposium on Computer Science and Law. ACM, Washington DC USA, 181–194. https://doi.org/10.1145/3511265.3550448
N. Helberger, M. Sax, J. Strycharz, and H.-W. Micklitz. 2022. Choice Architectures in the Digital Economy: Towards a New Understanding of Digital Vulnerability. Journal of Consumer Policy 45, 2 (Jun 2022), 175–200. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10603-021-09500-5
Ellen Johanna Helsper. 2012. A Corresponding Fields Model for the Links Between Social and Digital Exclusion: A Corresponding Fields Model for Digital Exclusion. Communication Theory 22, 4 (Nov 2012), 403–426. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.14682885.2012.01416.x
Ellen J. Helsper. 2021. The Digital Disconnect. The social causes and consequences of digital inequalities. SAGE Publications Ltd.
Ellen J. Helsper and Alexander J. A. M. van Deursen. 2017. Do the rich get digitally richer? Quantity and quality of support for digital engagement. Information, Communication & Society 20, 5 (May 2017), 700–714. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2016.1203454
Haiyan Jia, Pamela J. Wisniewski, Heng Xu, Mary Beth Rosson, and John M. Carroll. 2015. Risk-taking as a Learning Process for Shaping Teen’s Online Information Privacy Behaviors. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing. ACM, Vancouver BC Canada, 583–599. https://doi.org/10.1145/2675133.2675287
Chiara Krisam, Heike Dietmann, Melanie Volkamer, and Oksana Kulyk. 2021. Dark Patterns in the Wild: Review of Cookie Disclaimer Designs on Top 500 German Websites. In European Symposium on Usable Security 2021. ACM, Karlsruhe Germany, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1145/3481357.3481516
Lingyuan Li, Guo Freeman, and Donghee Yvette Wohn. 2020. Power in Skin: The Interplay of Self-Presentation, Tactical Play, and Spending in Fortnite. In Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play. ACM, Virtual Event Canada, 71–80. https://doi.org/10.1145/3410404.3414262
Sonia Livingstone and Peter K. Smith. 2014. Annual Research Review: Harms experienced by child users of online and mobile technologies: the nature, prevalence and management of sexual and aggressive risks in the digital age. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 55, 6 (Jun 2014), 635–654. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12197
Sonia Livingstone, Mariya Stoilova, and Rishita Nandagiri. 2019. Children’s data and privacy online: Growing up in a digital age. 153–173 pages. https://scindeks.ceon.rs/Article.aspx?artid=2334-959X2301153D
Jamie Luguri and Lior Jacob Strahilevitz. 2021. Shining a Light on Dark Patterns. Journal of Legal Analysis 13, 1 (Mar 2021), 43–109. https://doi.org/10.1093/jla/ laaa006
Kai Lukof, Ulrik Lyngs, Himanshu Zade, J. Vera Liao, James Choi, Kaiyue Fan, Sean A. Munson, and Alexis Hiniker. 2021. How the Design of YouTube Infuences User Sense of Agency. In Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, Yokohama Japan, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1145/ 3411764.3445467
Florencia Luna. 2019. Identifying and evaluating layers of vulnerability – a way forward. Developing World Bioethics 19, 2 (Jun 2019), 86–95. https://doi.org/10.1111/dewb.12206
Maximilian Maier and Rikard Harr. 2020. Dark Design Patterns: An End-User Perspective. Human Technology 16, 2 (Aug 2020), 170–199. https://doi.org/10.17011/ht/urn.202008245641
Gianclaudio Malgieri and Jędrzej Niklas. 2020. Vulnerable data subjects. Computer Law & Security Review 37 (Jul 2020), 105415. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clsr.2020. 105415
Arunesh Mathur, Gunes Acar, Michael J. Friedman, Elena Lucherini, Jonathan Mayer, Marshini Chetty, and Arvind Narayanan. 2019. Dark Patterns at Scale: Findings from a Crawl of 11K Shopping Websites. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 3, CSCW (Nov 2019), 1–32. https://doi.org/10.1145/ 3359183 arXiv: 1907.07032.
Arunesh Mathur, Jonathan Mayer, and Mihir Kshirsagar. 2021. What Makes a Dark Pattern... Dark? Design Attributes, Normative Considerations, and Measurement Methods. arXiv:2101.04843 [cs] (Jan 2021). https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764. 3445610 arXiv: 2101.04843.
Elisa Menardo, Giulia Balboni, and Roberto Cubelli. 2017. Environmental factors and teenagers’ personalities: The role of personal and familial Socio-Cultural Level. Behavioural Brain Research 325 (May 2017), 181–187. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbr.2017.02.038
Christian Meske and Ireti Amojo. 2020. Ethical Guidelines for the Construction of Digital Nudges. In Proceedings on the 53rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. 3928–3937.
Thomas Mildner, Merle Freye, Gian-Luca Savino, Philip R. Doyle, Benjamin R. Cowan, and Rainer Malaka. 2023. Defending Against the Dark Arts: Recognising Dark Patterns in Social Media. In Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference. ACM, Pittsburgh PA USA, 2362–2374. https://doi.org/10.1145/3563657.3595964
Alberto Monge Rofarello, Kai Lukof, and Luigi De Russis. 2023. Defning and Identifying Attention Capture Deceptive Designs in Digital Interfaces. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, Hamburg Germany, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3580729
Carol Moser, Sarita Y. Schoenebeck, and Paul Resnick. 2019. Impulse Buying: Design Practices and Consumer Needs. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, Glasgow Scotland Uk, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300472
Don Norman. 2013. The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition. Basic Books. https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=nVQPAAAAQBAJ
Midas Nouwens, Ilaria Liccardi, Michael Veale, David Karger, and Lalana Kagal. 2020. Dark Patterns after the GDPR: Scraping Consent Pop-ups and Demonstrating their Infuence. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 13. https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376321 arXiv: 2001.02479.
OECD. 2022. Dark commercial patterns. Number 336 in OECD Digital Economy Papers. 96 pages.
OECD. 2022. Online Choice Architecture - How digital design can harm competition and consumers - discussion paper. 76 pages.
OECD. 2023. Consumer Vulnerability in the Digital Age. Number 355 in OECD Digital Economy Papers. 80 pages.
Thomas Poell, David Nieborg, and José Van Dijck. 2019. Platformisation. Internet Policy Review 8, 4 (Nov 2019). https://doi.org/10.14763/2019.4.1425
Arianna Sala, Lorenzo Porcaro, and Emilia Gómez. 2024. Social Media Use and adolescents’ mental health and well-being: An umbrella review. Computers in Human Behavior Reports 14 (May 2024), 100404. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chbr.2024.100404
Johnny Saldaña. 2013. The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers (second edition ed.). SAGE, London.
Lorena Sánchez Chamorro, Kerstin Bongard-Blanchy, and Vincent Koenig. 2023. Ethical Tensions in UX Design Practice: Exploring the Fine Line Between Persuasion and Manipulation in Online Interfaces. In Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference. ACM, Pittsburgh PA USA, 2408–2422. https://doi.org/10.1145/3563657.3596013
Lorena Sánchez Chamorro, Romain Toebosch, and Carine Lallemand. 2024. Manipulative Design and Older Adults: Co-Creating Magic Machines to Understand Experiences of Online Manipulation. In Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS’24). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3643834.3661513
Ray Sin, Ted Harris, Simon Nilsson, and Talia Beck. 2022. Dark patterns in online shopping: do they work and can nudges help mitigate impulse buying? Behavioural Public Policy (May 2022), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1017/bpp.2022.11
Ryan Snelgrove and Mark E. Havitz. 2010. Looking Back in Time: The Pitfalls and Potential of Retrospective Methods in Leisure Studies. Leisure Sciences 32, 4 (Jun 2010), 337–351. https://doi.org/10.1080/01490400.2010.488199
Robert Soden, Austin Toombs, and Michaelanne Thomas. 2024. Evaluating Interpretive Research in HCI. https://interactions.acm.org/archive/view/januaryfebruary-2024/evaluating-interpretive-research-in-hci. [Accessed 06-02-2024].
Susan Leigh Star. 1999. The Ethnography of Infrastructure. American Behavioral Scientist 43, 3 (Dec 1999), 377–391.
Jelmer Tiemessen, Hanna Schrafenberger, and Gunes Acar. 2023. The Time is Ticking: The Efect of Limited Time Discounts on Consumers’ Buying Behavior and Experience. In Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, Hamburg Germany, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3585735
Reha Tuncer, Anastasia Sergeeva, Kerstin Bongard-Blanchy, Verena Distler, Sophie Doublet, and Vincent Koenig. 2023. Running out of time(rs): efects of scarcity cues on perceived task load, perceived benevolence and user experience on e-commerce sites. Behaviour & Information Technology (Sept. 2023), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2023.2242966
Christine Utz, Martin Degeling, Sascha Fahl, Florian Schaub, and Thorsten Holz. 2019. (Un)informed Consent: Studying GDPR Consent Notices in the Field. Proceedingsofthe2019ACMSIGSACConferenceonComputerandCommunications Security (Nov 2019), 973–990. https://doi.org/10.1145/3319535.3354212 arXiv: 1909.02638.
Jan van Dijk and Alexander J. A. M. van Deursen. 2014. Digital Skills. Palgrave Macmillan US, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137437037
Christof van Nimwegen and Jesse de Wit. 2022. Shopping in the Dark: Efects of Platform Choice on Dark Pattern Recognition. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 13304. Springer International Publishing, Cham, 462–475. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05412-9_32
Fiona Westin and Sonia Chiasson. 2019. Opt out of privacy or “go home”: understanding reluctant privacy behaviours through the FoMO-centric design paradigm. In Proceedings of the New Security Paradigms Workshop. ACM, San Carlos Costa Rica, 57–67. https://doi.org/10.1145/3368860.3368865
Pamela Wisniewski, Jessica Vitak, and Heidi Hartikainen. 2022. Privacy in Adolescence. Springer International Publishing, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82786-1
Amit Zac, Yun-Chun Huang, Amédée von Moltke, Christopher Decker, and Ariel Ezrachi. 2023. Dark Patterns and Consumer Vulnerability. (Aug. 2023). http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4547964
José P Zagal, Stafan Björk, and Chris Lewis. 2013. Dark Patterns in the Design of Games. Foundations of Digital Games 2013 (2013), 8.
David Zendle, Paul Cairns, Herbie Barnett, and Cade McCall. 2020. Paying for loot boxes is linked to problem gambling, regardless of specifc features like cash-out and pay-to-win. Computers in Human Behavior 102 (Jan. 2020), 181–191. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2019.07.003
