Teen-alyse: A Mobile Application for Parental control, Teen Self-Monitoring and Active Mediation

Abstract

The unprecedented COVID scenario has exponentially increased the exposure of internet to adolescent age group of the world population. The sudden extended online presence of this age group has created an area of concern in parenting fraternity as this is accompanied by restrictions on the normal social life of children. However, study states that direct parental control methods lessen the trust and the bond between the parent and the teen. If the teens are explained about the possible consequences of their online actions in a friendly manner, it helps them to understand the need of self-regulation and caution when they are being part of online community actively or passively. In this work, a self- regulation model is proposed. The self-regulation model is developed as a Mobile app called “Teen-alyse”. This app is designed to help in achieving a balance in parental guidelines and teen self-regulation. Further, the idea of active mediation has been included which encourages both, parent, and teen to have conversation for the time limit set for the mobile apps. By applying an analysis algorithm, the teen's YouTube activities are classified as flagged and not flagged contents and a report is generated, which alerts teens as well as parents. The work proposes the model of teen self-regulating app by following values of parental control, teen self-monitoring and active mediation.