Research

Abigail is a second-year PhD student in the Computation, Organizations and Society program at Carnegie Mellon University. She is a member of the CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory, and is advised by Professor Lorrie Faith Cranor. Her research in usable privacy focuses on how parents and their teenaged children make privacy-related decisions about teens’ use of the internet and digital technologies.

Research Summary

Modern teens are engaging in much of their socialization online, through social networking websites such as Facebook or Instagram, or through mobile applications and texting. Their parents, who did not grow up with these technologies, are left to play catchup. The parents are faced with a challenging decision: how do they monitor their teens’ online behavior to keep them safe? Unfortunately, many parents azre unsure of how to balance their monitoring with teens’ need for independence and private space. Abigail’s research is centered on how parents and teens negotiate these decisions and where the communication breaks down, with an eye toward how technology can be used to bridge the communication gap between parents and teens.