Some Things Never Change: Overcoming Persistent Challenges in Children IR

Conference Paper (2025)
Author(s)

Maria Soledad Pera (TU Delft - Web Information Systems)

Theo Huibers (University of Twente)

Emiliana Murgia (University of Genova)

Monica Landoni (UniversitĂ  della Svizzera Italiana)

Research Group
Web Information Systems
DOI related publication
https://doi.org/10.1145/3726302.3730270
More Info
expand_more
Publication Year
2025
Language
English
Research Group
Web Information Systems
Pages (from-to)
3107-3109
Reuse Rights

Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.

Abstract

There is a lack of a steady and solid influx of information retrieval (IR) research that has children (as the user group) as the protagonist. Existing work is scattered, conducted by only a few research groups, and often based on small-scale user studies or data that cannot be widely shared. Moreover, much of the current research focuses on specific age ranges and abilities, neglecting the broader spectrum of children's needs. Consequently, the paucity of IR research on how search and recommender systems serve and/or ultimately affect children translates into one of many 'Low-resource environments' in IR. Drawing from the literature and our experience in this area, we highlight key challenges and encourage greater attention from the IR community to address this critical gap.