Parental Monitoring Applications for Online Risk Language Detection Amongst LGBTQ+ Youth and Caregivers: A Mixed Methods Approach

Background and Purpose: Parental monitoring applications, which detect risk language alerting to Online Victimization (i.e. OV) events experienced by adolescents through social media usage, have been widely implemented by caregivers and schools across the US. Youth who identify as LGBTQ+ experience roughly three times the rate of OV as their non-LGBTQ+ peers. Thus, this is the population who could most benefit from these applications. However, research detailing the perceptions of those LGBTQ+ adolescents, as well as views of their caregivers, of these apps, remain largely absent from the literature. The acceptability of these platforms among LGBTQ+ youth therefore remains unknown. This research uses mixed methods to examine the acceptability of parental social media monitoring platforms among LGBTQ+ and non-LGBTQ+ adolescent groups.

Methods: We conducted a convergent parallel mixed methods study, on which qualitative and quantitative data were gathered simultaneously, to gain rich insight into attitudes of LGBTQ+ adolescents and their caregivers towards parental social media monitoring apps. For our quantitative approach, participants (N = 757) ages 12-17, completed a national cross-sectional online survey between February and July 2022. Surveys evaluated adolescents’ perceptions of the beneficial and detrimental aspects of parental monitoring platforms. Descriptive statistics were calculated for survey responses, and chi-square and t-tests were used to compare responses among LGBTQ+ and non-LGBTQ+ youth. For our qualitative approach, LGBTQ+ adolescents with past year OV experiences and lifetime history of suicidal thoughts and behaviors (N = 20, ages 12-17) and their caregivers (N = 11) provided their reaction to descriptions of parental monitoring applications. Qualitative data were transcribed, coded, and analyzed using rapid content analysis and synthesized to offer explanation and further understanding of quantitative findings.

Results: Quantitative data revealed differences in youth perspectives, including LGBTQ+ youth reporting less comfortability and more perceived negatives than their non-LGBTQ+ peers. Qualitative interviews with LGBTQ+ adolescents revealed themes of unintentional outing and concerns toward privacy, positive and negative parental communication and intervention in relation to OV, and concerns about platforms misidentifying OV. Interviews with caregivers yielded themes pertaining to doubting platforms’ ability to accurately detect OV, need for supportive parent-child conversation following OV alerts from platforms, and the necessity to protect teens online privacy.

Conclusions and Implications: As caregivers search for solutions to mitigate OV risk for teens, parental monitoring platforms have continued to grow in implementation. It is imperative that teens’ perspectives are presented at the forefront of those conversations around app utilization, especially for LGBTQ+ youth who are anticipated to be the group most impacted by OV. Observing teen perspectives both individually and concurrently with caregiver opinions can create a more thorough and rounded approach to monitoring app dissemination, ensuring ethical and safe usage amongst both groups.