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Smart technologies are upending normative expectations that parents are the authority figure in families, challenging conventional wisdom about the power dynamics of parent-child attachment relationships (Bortz et al., 2019; Darling & Steinberg, 1993). Younger generations in the 21st century are digital natives, signaling that youth may have more technological expertise (and use more platforms) than parents (Dworkin et al., 2018; Hertlein & Twist, 2019). In the digital age, technological knowledge is a source of power that can challenge the intergenerational hierarchy, fueling uncertainty and exacerbating developmental tensions in families.

Our transdisciplinary research team brings expertise from family science, with a focus on familial relationships over the life course (eg, Allen & Henderson, 2017), and information systems, with a focus on information privacy in the digital age (Bélanger & Crossler, 2019). We examined how intergenerational family relationships are affected by tensions when adopting new technologies. The unanticipated COVID-19 pandemic provides an opportunity to understand how families navigate attitudes and behaviors that can jeopardize health and well-being during a global health crisis (Thomeer et al., 2020). Informed by family stress and resiliency theories (Henry et al., 2015; Prime et al., 2020), and information technology research, we studied parentteen pairs around the use of contact tracing and health assessment apps. Contact tracing apps can help warn a user if they have been near a COVID-19 positive person. Each family member must decide whether to enable contact tracing on their smartphone, which …