Work

A Comparative Study of How People With and Without ADHD Recognise and Avoid Dark Patterns on Social Media

Year: 2025

Type: conference-paper

Abstract: Dark patterns are deceptive strategies that recent work in humancomputer interaction (HCI) has captured throughout digital domains, including social networking sites (SNSs).While research has identified difficulties among people to recognise dark patterns effectively, few studies consider vulnerable populations and their experience in this regard, including people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), who may be especially susceptible to attention-grabbing tricks.Based on an interactive web study with 135 participants, we investigate SNS users' ability to recognise and avoid dark patterns by comparing results from participants with and without ADHD.In line with prior work, we noticed overall low recognition of dark patterns with no significant differences between the two groups.Yet, ADHD individuals were able to avoid specific dark patterns more often.Our results advance previous work by understanding dark patterns in a realistic environment and offer insights into their effect on vulnerable populations.

Source: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

DOI: 10.1145/3706598.3713776

Authors: Thomas Mildner, Daniel Fidel, Evropi Stefanidi, Paweł W. Woźniak, Rainer Malaka, Jasmin Niess

Institutions: University of Bremen, TU Wien, University of Oslo

Language: English

Topic: Innovative Human-Technology Interaction

Subfield: Human-Computer Interaction

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: hybrid

Funders: Freie Hansestadt Bremen, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Universität Bremen, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft