Parents, passwords, and parenting: How parents think about passwords and are involved in their children's password practices

Published

July 23, 2023

Author(s)

Yee-Yin Choong, Kerrianne Buchanan, Olivia Williams

Abstract

Though much is known about how adults understand and use passwords, little research attention has been paid specifically to parents or, more importantly, to how parents influence their children's password practices. To better understand both the password practices of parents, as well as how parents in turn influence the password practices of their children, we surveyed 266 parents with school aged children (kindergarten through 12th grade). We asked parents about their general technology use, the kinds of technologies and password-protected accounts they use; how they make and maintain their passwords; and about how, if at all, they help their children create and maintain passwords. We found that parent password practices align with research surrounding adult password practices, and that parents, especially those of younger children, are very involved in the creation and maintenance of their children's passwords. With these findings, we conclude with both recommendations for future research, as well as a call for cybersecurity community to better support parents' password understandings so that parents, in turn, can better support their children.

Proceedings Title

Proceedings of 2023 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction

Conference Dates

July 23-28, 2023

Conference Location

Copenhagen, DK

Conference Title

25th International conference on Human-Computer Interaction

Pub Type

Conferences

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35822-7_3

Local Download

Keywords

Parents, Parenting, Passwords, Password practices, Usable security, Perceptions, Usability

Citation

Choong, Y. , Buchanan, K. and Williams, O. (2023), Parents, passwords, and parenting: How parents think about passwords and are involved in their children's password practices, Proceedings of 2023 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Copenhagen, DK, [online], https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35822-7_3, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=933830 (Accessed April 25, 2026)

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