From "Fail Fast" to "Mature Safely:" Expert Perspectives as Secondary Stakeholders on Teen-Centered Social Media Risk Detection

TL;DR

This study evaluates MOSafely, a teen-facing risk-detection dashboard, through interviews with 33 online safety experts to identify feasibility and design tensions prior to deployment. It reveals five cross-cutting tensions across risk definition, detection function, teen empowerment, data privacy, and sustainability, arguing for a shift from a 'fail fast' to a 'mature safely' paradigm and a broader multi-stakeholder governance approach. The paper offers a design and governance roadmap—emphasizing hybrid intelligence, context-sensitive interventions, privacy-preserving data practices, and modular integration—to realize credible, scalable teen online safety tools. Findings underscore the need to align expert perspectives with youth needs to ensure effective, equitable, and sustainable online safety solutions.

Abstract

In addressing various risks on social media, the HCI community has advocated for teen-centered risk detection technologies over platform-based, parent-centered features. However, their real-world viability remains underexplored by secondary stakeholders beyond the family unit. Therefore, we present an evaluation of a teen-centered social media risk detection dashboard through online interviews with 33 online safety experts. While experts praised our dashboard's clear design for teen agency, their feedback revealed five primary tensions in implementing and sustaining such technology: objective vs. context-dependent risk definition, informing risks vs. meaningful intervention, teen empowerment vs. motivation, need for data vs. data privacy, and independence vs. sustainability. These findings motivate us to rethink "teen-centered" and a shift from a "fail fast" to a "mature safely" paradigm for youth safety technology innovation. We offer design implications for addressing these tensions before system deployment with teens and strategies for aligning secondary stakeholders' interests to deploy and sustain such technologies in the broader ecosystem of youth online safety.

Figures (5)

• Figure 1: The MOSafely dashboard interface, showing card-based summaries that quantify total detected risks and break them down by category (e.g., "Sexual," "Cyberbullying").
• Figure 2: The conversation management page. An edit icon (pencil) is displayed next to a message, indicating the feature that allows users to provide message-level feedback on the AI's risk assessment.
• Figure 3: The two-step user workflow for correcting a misidentified risk. (a) The user reports an error on a message, and (b) a pop-up modal allows them to submit a manual correction.
• Figure 4: The data upload workflow. (a) The user is shown an interface to select their social media platform. (b) After selection, a new screen shows multi-step instructions for data retrieval (Instagram as an example).
• Figure 5: Five tensions that our participants identified in implementing and sustaining a teen-centered social media risk detection technology like our MOSafely dashboard, from the micro to the macro levels.