The Google family home. Smart speaker use in Dutch families and the impact of parents’ individual and contextual characteristics

Smart speakers are a growing phenomenon in families with young children. Yet, early scholarship suggests that the reality of welcoming a smart speaker in the family and ongoingly using it is rather complex–not only because of the non-uniformity of families who own a device, but also because smart speaker use in the family space is, in itself, multi-dimensional. To that end, this study looks beyond initial device ownership and acknowledges a triad of considerations for ongoing smart speaker use in families: how often (frequency) the smart speaker is used for what (purpose) and by whom (form) in the family. Based on N = 370 Dutch parents, who have at least one young child at home and have possessed a Google Assistant-smart speaker device for minimally the past six months, we uncover six common types of use. We also find that especially individual trust dispositions of parents and their perceptions of certain narratives in the news media context shape these different ways of smart speaker use. Our findings theoretically support taking a differential susceptibility approach to media use and offer meaningful insights for further understanding, facilitating, and safeguarding technology use and acceptance processes.