Sunny Consolvo
Sunny is a researcher at Google where she spends most of her time focusing on digital-safety topics.
Authored Publications
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Who is At-Risk? Surveying the Prevalence of Risk Factors and Tech-Facilitated Attacks in the United States
Sharon Heung
Claire Weizenegger
Mo Houtti
Tara Matthews
Ashley Walker
2026
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A growing body of qualitative research has identified contextual risk factors that elevate people’s chances of experiencing digital-safety attacks. However, the lack of quantitative data on the population level distribution of these risk factors prevents policymakers and tech companies from developing targeted, evidence-based interventions to improve digital safety. To address this gap, we surveyed 5,001 adults in the United States to analyze: (1) the frequency of and relationship between digital-safety attacks (e.g., scams, harassment, account hacking), and (2) how these attacks align with 10 contextual risk factors. Nearly half of our respondents identify as resource constrained, which significantly correlates with higher likelihood of experiencing four common attacks. We also present qualitative insights to expand our understanding of the factors beyond the existing literature (e.g., “prominence” included high-visibility roles in local communities). This study provides the first large-scale quantitative analysis correlating digital-safety attacks with contextual risk factors and demographics.
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"It didn’t feel right but I needed a job so desperately": Understanding People's Emotions & Help Needs During Financial Scams
G. Jake Chanenson
Tara Matthews
Jessica McClearn
Sarah Meiklejohn
Mia Hassoun
2026
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Online financial scams represent a long-standing and serious threat for which people seek help. We present a study to understand people’s in situ motivations for engaging with scams and the help needs they express before, during, and after encountering a scam. We identify the main emotions scammers exploited (e.g., fear, hope) and characterize how they did so. We examine factors—such as financial insecurity and legal precarity—which elevate people’s risk of engaging with specific scams and experiencing harm. We indicate when people sought help and describe their help-seeking needs and emotions at different stages of the scam. We discuss how these needs could be met through the design of contextually-specific prevention, diagnostic, mitigation, and recovery interventions.
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Supporting the Digital Safety of At-Risk Users: Lessons Learned from 9+ Years of Research and Training
Tara Matthews
Lea Kissner
Andreas Kramm
Andrew Oplinger
Andy Schou
Stephan Somogyi
Dalila Szostak
Jill Woelfer
Lawrence You
Izzie Zahorian
ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 32(3) (2025), pp. 1-39
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Creating information technologies intended for broad use that allow everyone to participate safely online—which we refer to as inclusive digital safety—requires understanding and addressing the digital-safety needs of a diverse range of users who face elevated risk of technology-facilitated attacks or disproportionate harm from such attacks—i.e., at-risk users. This article draws from more than 9 years of our work at Google to understand and support the digital safety of at-risk users—including survivors of intimate partner abuse, people involved with political campaigns, content creators, youth, and more—in technology intended for broad use. Among our learnings is that designing for inclusive digital safety across widely varied user needs and dynamic contexts is a wicked problem with no “correct” solution. Given this, we describe frameworks and design principles we have developed to help make at-risk research findings practically applicable to technologies intended for broad use and lessons we have learned about communicating them to practitioners.
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Beyond Digital Literacy: Building Youth Digital Resilience Through Existing “Information Sensibility” Practices
Mia Hassoun
Ian Beacock
Todd Carmody
Beth Goldberg
Devika Kumar
Laura Murray
Rebekah Park
Behzad Sarmadi
Social Sciences Journal, 14(4) (2025)
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Youth media consumption and disordered eating practices have historically been subjects of moral panics, often resulting in protective, deficit-based interventions like content removal. We argue for interventions which instead equip youth to evaluate and manage risks in their online environments, building upon their existing “information sensibility” practices. Drawing upon ethnographic research and intervention testing with 77 participants in the US and India, we analyze how youth (aged 13–26), including those with diverse political perspectives and those recovering from disordered eating (DE), engage with online news and health information. Participants generally algorithmically encountered (rather than searched for) information online, and their engagement was shaped more by social motivations—like belonging—than truth seeking. Participants interpreted online information collaboratively, relying on social cues and peer validation within their online communities. They demonstrated preference for personal testimonies and relatable sources, particularly those with similar social identities. We propose resilience-building interventions that build upon these youth online information practices by: (1) leveraging peer networks, promoting critical information engagement through collaborative learning and peer-to-peer support within online communities; (2) developing social media sensibility, equipping youth to critically evaluate information sources in situ; (3) providing pathways offline, connecting youth to desired in-person communities; and (4) encouraging probabilistic thinking.
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Youth are increasingly exposed to a broad range of technology-facilitated abuse that challenges their safety and well-being. Building on previous work that examined youth help-seeking behaviors, coping strategies, threats they encounter, and the social support systems around them, we articulate a framework— called PROTECT—Problem recognition, Reaching out, Organizing support, Training, Engaging experts, Continuous support, and Tackling safety measures—which integrates existing models of support, help-seeking, and digital skills to offer a high-level, structured approach to adults who serve as a support system to youth navigate technology-facilitated abuse. The framework unpacks social and contextual dynamics that influence help-seeking behaviors, providing a foundation for educators, advocates, health professionals, developers and other adult stakeholders to design and develop trauma-informed, timely interventions to promote resilience.
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Help-seeking and Coping Strategies for Technology-facilitated Abuse Experienced by Youth
Diana Freed
Dan Cosley
Ender Ricart
Natalie Bazarova
2025
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Technology provides youth (ages 10–17) with near-constant opportunities for learning, communication, and self-expression. It can also expose them to technology-facilitated abuse: harassment, coercion, fraud, and more. The ability of youth to navigate such abuse is crucial for their well-being and development. A recent advisory by the U.S. Surgeon General called for better support of youth, including that youth should “reach out for help.” However, little is known about how youth seek help or otherwise cope with technology-facilitated abuse. Through a qualitative study in the U.S., we examine how youth engage in self-reliance, seek help from others, and how others seek help on a youth’s behalf. We discuss these strategies and outline opportunities for how the HCI community can better support youth who experience technology-facilitated abuse.
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PROTECT: A Framework to Foster Digital Resilience for Youth Navigating Technology-Facilitated Abuse
Diana Freed
Natalie Bazarova
Dan Cosley
Social Sciences Journal, 14(6) (2025)
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Youth are increasingly exposed to a broad range of technology-facilitated abuse that challenges their safety and well-being. Building on previous work that examined youth help-seeking behaviors, coping strategies, threats they encounter, and the social support systems around them, we articulate a framework— called PROTECT—Problem recognition, Reaching out, Organizing support, Training, Engaging experts, Continuous support, and Tackling safety measures—which integrates existing models of support, help-seeking, and digital skills to offer a high-level, structured approach to adults who serve as a support system to youth navigate technology-facilitated abuse. The framework unpacks social and contextual dynamics that influence help-seeking behaviors, providing a foundation for educators, advocates, health professionals, developers and other adult stakeholders to design and develop trauma-informed, timely interventions to promote resilience.
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Understanding Help-Seeking and Help-Giving on Social Media for Image-Based Sexual Abuse
Tara Matthews
Miranda Wei
Sarah Meiklejohn
(2024)
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Image-based sexual abuse (IBSA), like other forms of technology-facilitated abuse, is a growing threat to peoples' digital safety. Attacks include unwanted solicitations for sexually explicit images, extorting people under threat of leaking their images, or purposefully leaking images to enact revenge or exert control. In this paper, we explore how people experiencing IBSA seek and receive help from social media. Specifically, we identify over 100,000 Reddit posts that engage relationship and advice communities for help related to IBSA. We draw on a stratified sample of these posts to qualitatively examine how various types of IBSA unfold, the support needs of victim-survivors experiencing IBSA, and how communities help victim-survivors navigate their abuse through technical, emotional, and relationship advice. In the process, we highlight how gender, relationship dynamics, and the threat landscape influence the design space of sociotechnical solutions. We also highlight gaps that remain to connecting victim-survivors with important care---regardless of whom they turn to for help.
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"Millions of people are watching you": Understanding the digital safety needs of creators
Patrawat Samermit
Tara Matthews
Vanessia Wu
(2023)
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Online content creators---who create and share their content on platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, and YouTube---are uniquely at-risk of increased digital-safety threats due to their public prominence, the diverse social norms of wide-ranging audiences, and their access to audience members as a valuable resource. We interviewed 23 creators to understand their digital-safety experiences. This includes the security, privacy, and abuse threats they have experienced across multiple platforms and how the threats have changed over time. We also examined the protective practices they have employed to stay safer, including tensions in how they adopt the practices. We found that creators have diverse threat models that take into consideration their emotional, physical, relational, and financial safety. Most adopted protections---including distancing from technology, moderating their communities, and seeking external or social support---only after experiencing a serious safety incident. Lessons from their experiences help us better prepare and protect creators and ensure a diversity of voices are present online.
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Practicing Information Sensibility: How Gen Z Engages with Online Information
Amelia Hassoun
Ian Beacock
Beth Goldberg
Daniel M. Russell
ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (2023)
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Assessing the trustworthiness of information online is complicated. Literacy-based paradigms are both widely used to help and widely critiqued. We conducted a study with 35 Gen Zers from across the U.S. to understand how they assess information online. We found that they tended to encounter—rather than search for—information, and that those encounters were shaped more by social motivations than by truth-seeking queries. For them, information processing is fundamentally a social practice. Gen Zers interpreted online information together, as aspirational members of social groups. Our participants sought information sensibility: a socially-informed awareness of the value of information encountered online. We outline key challenges they faced and practices they used to make sense of information. Our findings suggest that like their information sensibility practices, solutions and strategies to address misinformation should be embedded in social contexts online.
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