The DOI matches its Crossref record; 39 of the 39 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Parenting with Alexa: Exploring the Introduction of Smart Speakers on Family Dynamics
Abstract
Smart speakers have become pervasive in family homes, creating the potential for these devices to influence parent-child dynamics and parenting behaviors. We investigate the impact of introducing a smart speaker to 10 families with children, over four weeks. We use pre- and post- deployment interviews with the whole family and in-home audio capture of parent-child interactions with the smart speaker for our analysis. Despite the smart speaker causing occasional conflict in the home, we observed that parents lever-aged the smart speaker to further parenting goals. We found three forms of influence the smart speaker has on family dynamics: 1) fostering communication, 2) disrupting access, and 3) augmenting parenting. All of these influences arise from a communally accessible, stand-alone voice interface which democratizes family access to technology. We discuss design implications in furthering parenting practices and behaviors as the capabilities of the technology continue to improve.
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“The pandemic exacerbated a problem common to older and vulnerable adults, social isolation [12,22,42,67,84]”
From Amazon Echo Show as a Multimodal Human-to-Human Care Support Tool within Self-Isolating Older UK Households (2022) · cites this paper as [12]
In the citing paper
“Other findings [11,29] demonstrate how this lack of support for multi-person conversations has implications for family interactions, for instance where parents and their children are trying to use a voice assistant for different purposes (e.g. parents running errands, shopping and children wishing to play games on the device) causing tension [10].”
From Amazon Echo Show as a Multimodal Human-to-Human Care Support Tool within Self-Isolating Older UK Households (2022) · cites this paper as [11]
In the citing paper
“As seen in previous investigations into VAs, conversational breakdowns between participants and the device [10,11] quickly led to reduced perceptions of trust in the device.”
From Amazon Echo Show as a Multimodal Human-to-Human Care Support Tool within Self-Isolating Older UK Households (2022) · cites this paper as [11]
In the citing paper
“Families as an essential factor of children's development, also play a significant role in children's interaction with technology [9, 16].”
From "When He Feels Cold, He Goes to the Seahorse"—Blending Generative AI into Multimaterial Storymaking for Family Expressive Arts Therapy (2024) · cites this paper as [9]
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“Initial research regarding family interactions with smart speakers in the home have shown that families collaborate to use the smart speaker, particularly during communication breakdowns, and that existing social dynamics of the household are reflected in family interactions with the smart speaker [3,31].”
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Metadata
- Authors
- Beneteau, E., Boone, A., Wu, Y., Kientz, J. A., Yip, J., & Hiniker, A.
- Affiliations
- University of Washington (US)
- Indiana University Bloomington (US)
- University of Washinton, Seattle, WA, USA
- Venue
- Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2020-04-21
- Pages
- 1-13
- OpenAlex
- W3029691645
- Cited by
- 140
- References
- 39
- Citations by year
- 2026: 20 · 2025: 22 · 2024: 28 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 20 · 2021: 31 · 2020: 2
- FWCI
- 56.34
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Mozilla Foundation
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › Child Development and Digital Technology
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Innovative Human-Technology Interaction
- Social Sciences › Demography › Family Dynamics and Relationships
- Keywords
- smart speakers, Amazon Alexa, parenting, parent-child interaction, family dynamics, speech interfaces, family communication, access to technology
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