Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction

Publisher

Taylor & Francis Inc.

Publication Date

7-16-2025

Journal Article Version

Accepted Manuscript

First Page

1

Last Page

38

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Abstract

Teenagers' lack of digital sophistication and cyber hygiene makes them vulnerable to social engineering attacks, especially as they start using social media. Clickbait, one of such attacks, is primarily performed through social media to trick users into clicking on malicious links. With teenagers' increasing use of social media, clickbait poses a substantial threat to their online safety. The existing online safety measures for teens mainly focus on parental mediation, which can be perceived as restrictive and privacy-invasive. To this end, researchers recommended empowering teens to deal with online risks. In order to design such interventions for clickbait, we conducted co-design sessions with 27 teenagers aimed at understanding their perceptions of clickbait and co-designing countermeasures against it. Our findings suggest that teenagers are vulnerable to clickbait due to relevance and peer influence, where co-design activities reveal variations of interventions presenting their unique perspectives through storytelling. Overall, our study provides valuable insights into understanding teenagers' needs and expectations around clickbait and interventions designed against it. We offer guidelines for future research in these directions based on our findings.

Comments

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. CNS-1949699.

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