Parental control apps, which are mobile apps that allow parents to monitor and restrict their children's activities online, are becoming increasingly adopted by parents as a means of safeguarding their children's online safety. However, it is not clear whether these apps are always beneficial or effective in what they aim to do; for instance, the overuse of restriction and surveillance has been found to undermine parent-child relationship and children's sense of autonomy. In this work, we investigate this gap, asking specifically: how might children's and parents' perceptions be related to how parental control features were designed? To investigate this question, we conducted an analysis of 58 top Android parental control apps designed for the purpose of promoting children's online safety, finding three major axes of variation in how key restriction and monitoring features were realised: granularity, feedback/transparency, and parent-child communications support. To relate these axes to perceived benefits and problems, we then analysed 3264 app reviews to identify references to aspects of the each of the axes above, to understand children's and parents' views of how such dimensions related to their experiences with these apps. Our findings led towards 1) an understanding of how parental control apps realise their functionalities differently along three axes of variation, 2) an analysis of exactly the ways that such variation influences children's and parents' perceptions, respectively of the usefulness or effectiveness of these apps, and finally 3) an identification of design recommendations and opportunities for future apps by contextualising our findings within existing digital parenting theories.

中文翻译：

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保护还是惩罚？将家长控制应用程序的设计空间和对它们的看法联系起来，以支持在线安全育儿

家长控制应用程序是一种允许父母监控和限制孩子在线活动的移动应用程序，正越来越多地被家长采用，作为保护孩子在线安全的手段。但是，尚不清楚这些应用程序是否总是有益或有效地实现其目标；例如，已发现过度使用限制和监视会破坏亲子关系和儿童的自主感。在这项工作中，我们调查了这一差距，具体询问：儿童和父母的看法与父母控制功能的设计方式有何关联？为了调查这个问题，我们对 58 款旨在促进儿童在线安全的顶级 Android 家长控制应用程序进行了分析，发现关键限制和监控功能如何实现的三个主要变化轴：粒度、反馈/透明度和亲子通信支持。为了将这些轴与感知到的好处和问题联系起来，我们随后分析了 3264 条应用评论，以确定对上述每个轴各方面的参考，以了解儿童和父母对这些维度与他们使用这些应用的体验有何关联的看法。我们的研究结果导致 1) 了解家长控制应用程序如何沿三个变化轴以不同方式实现其功能，2) 分析此类变化影响儿童和父母感知的确切方式，分别是这些应用程序的有用性或有效性,