Children’s design recommendations for online safety education

Abstract Ever younger children have their personal life online and there are worries of their online safety. To understand how children engage with and perceive online safety education targeted at them we arranged workshops with 11–12-year-old children who engaged with three existing educational packages for online safety targeted at children and brainstormed design recommendations for future education. We report the results of the workshops and further analyze the results using the lens of Schwartz’s theory of basic human values. Based on the analysis, we recommend that child–computer interaction designers and practitioners of online safety education acknowledge the following when developing educational packages on online safety for children’s use: considering both children’s and educators’ objectives and related values; integrating aspects of children’s own media culture; including more concrete advice; having a positive tone; and, engaging both children and teachers in the design and evaluation.