Beyond the Screen: Designing a Safer Digital Childhood

Abstract

Children's digital experiences offer opportunities for learning, creativity and play, but they also raise concerns about content suitability, supervision, routines and the balance between screen use and offline life. Most parental-control tools respond by restricting access: they block, filter or limit. This exploratory study asks a different question: how might a child-friendly digital environment support more intentional device use among children aged 2–12 while helping caregivers manage these concerns, rather than only restricting what children can do? We combined a narrative literature review, a caregiver questionnaire (28 submissions, of which four met parent/guardian eligibility after screening), one semi-structured caregiver interview, a review of four existing tools, and affinity-based thematic analysis. All four eligible respondents reported device use several times a day, all four reported device use during meals, all four were concerned about age-unsuitable content, and three of four said they found parental controls hard to understand or set up. Three of four reported using no specific management method. From these patterns we identify key pain points and design opportunities and describe Kids World, a concept for a child mode with a separate caregiver area. The sample is very small and not representative of Bhopal; the concept has not been usability-tested. The findings are therefore presented as design hypotheses and requirements for future evaluation, not as evidence of effectiveness.