Understanding Teens’ Perceptions and Aspirations towards Relationship with Personal Technology: Survey of teens (Preprint)
BACKGROUND Understanding teens' relationship with technology is a pressing topic in this digital era. There seem to be both benefit and harmful implications that originate from use of technology by teens. Approximately 95% of teenagers have access to a smartphone, and several studies show a positive correlation between screen addiction and trends of Anxiety and Depression. While, at the same time, research shows that two-thirds of teenagers believe that technology is a necessity for connecting and making new friends. OBJECTIVE The aim of this formative research is to understand how teens’ perceive their own and others’ relationship with personal technology and what future relationships teens aspire to have with their technology. METHODS This research paper explores teens and technology relationship via three novel lenses. Lens-1 is teens' perception of their current relationship with their personal technology as users. Lens-2 is teens' perception of others' (parents, siblings or friends) relationship with personal technology as bystanders. Lens-3 is teens’ aspiration of how they wish to relate to their personal technology. We conducted an online survey with 619 teens in the 13-19 years age range. RESULTS We found that teens selected 'Essential,' 'Distractive,' and 'Addictive' most commonly to describe both their own and others' relationship with personal technology. Teens selected 'Provides an escape' more to describe their own relationship with technology. Whereas, they selected 'It's just a tool' and 'Creates Barrier' more to describe others' relationship with technology. These trends are consistent across ages and genders. Additionally, we found that 13-15 year-olds, particularly the majority of females in this age range, wish to see their future technology as their 'best friend.' However, 16-17 year-olds’ top choice was 'I don't believe in personal connection with mobile technology,’ and 18-19 year-olds’ top choice was 'My personal assistant.’ CONCLUSIONS Our three lenses approach is holistic as it allows comparison of how teens perceive their relationship with personal technology as users vs. bystanders and from current vs. aspirational perspectives. Our findings not only confirm what is established, but uncovers critical new associations more exclusive to teens' own relationship with technology. Based on our findings, we suggest design guidelines for informing personal tech design, including a shift from 'user experience design' process to 'user relationship design.'