Raising children's awareness of smartphone privacy risks through a targeted cybersecurity intervention

Research indicates that while children care about their privacy, they often engage in risky online behaviours and neglect critical privacy settings that can protect their personal information. This reflects the privacy paradox: children claim to care about privacy but engage in behaviours that compromise it, underscoring the need for education to raise children’s awareness of these risks. To address this issue, we delivered a cyber safety lesson for adolescents in five high schools in NSW focusing on how they can prevent leakage of sensitive information from their smartphones. Surveys conducted before and after the lesson assessed the students' knowledge, attitudes, and level of concern of smartphone security issues and privacy risks. The study found that the educational intervention significantly improved children’s knowledge of smartphone privacy settings, fostered a more cautious attitude toward using their real names on their phones, and heightened concerns about unintentionally leaking information regarding their location.