Apps and websites increasingly employ dark patterns, malicious interface design strategies that nudge people towards making decisions against their best interests. So far, dark patterns research has focused almost exclusively on adults. Today, however, children grow up with easy access to apps and online content, and they are particularly vulnerable to manipulation. Therefore, we aim to better understand how dark patterns impact children.
To this end, we conducted a triangulated elicitation study at a German school with 66 fifth-graders (10–11 years old) to start understanding how they perceive dark patterns. We found that many children understood the intentions behind simple dark patterns. When asked to actively search for manipulations, about half noticed overly complex wordings and color-based manipulations. About every fourth child spotted manipulative formulations. Most, however, completely missed Bad Defaults nudging them towards sharing personal data. This indicates that children may be particularly susceptible to bad privacy defaults.