A cautionary tale: children, dark patterns and normative perspectives

This article explores the intersection of dark patterns — deceptive design practices that manipulate user behavior—with children’s digital experiences, examining how universal cognitive vulnerabilities intersect with context-specific susceptibilities. After reviewing scholarship on dark patterns and synthesizing fragmented empirical research on children’s encounters with manipulative design, the article applies Mathur, Mayer, and Kshirsagar’s (2021) normative framework to assess harms across individual welfare, collective welfare, regulatory objectives, and autonomy in children’s contexts. Drawing on vulnerability theory, children’s rights instruments, and childhood studies, it situates children within this taxonomy to clarify how developmental characteristics and relational dependencies shape exposure to manipulation in digital environments. Children constitute a particularly revealing analytical lens for understanding digital vulnerability: while developmental characteristics heighten their exposure to manipulation, dark patterns exploit cognitive features universally shared. By engaging both particularist and universalist accounts, the article argues that protective measures developed with children in mind may establish baseline standards addressing digital vulnerability more broadly.