A hands-on prototype that teaches teens (13 to 17) to spot dark patterns: design that is built to steer you into spending more time or money than you planned.
Apps, games and websites are designed. Some of that design helps you, and some of it works against you. BeWare lets you try three fake apps (a mobile game, a web shop and a social feed) and learn to spot the tricks in them. Each scenario runs in three steps:
- Try it: use the fake app with the tricks active and no commentary.
- See it: every trick is numbered on screen and explained in plain words.
- Resist it: spot the tricks in a new version, then choose what you would do instead.
A six-question quiz can be taken before and after.
BeWare was made to accompany a policy submission on the EU KIDS Act (COM(2026) 681 final), as an example of digital manipulation literacy through experiential education. It is a prototype of an approach, not evidence that the approach works.
- Available in English and Swedish.
- No accounts, no data collection, no storage. All money in the simulations is fake.
- Outside the simulations, the app does not use the tricks it teaches.
Live: https://michpalm.github.io/be-ware-learning/
To run it yourself, serve the folder with any static web server (for example npx serve) and open
index.html. There is no build step and no backend. The fonts are included in the repository, so the
page makes no requests to third parties.
Created by Michael Palma (michpalm), a software engineer and game design student in Sweden, with Claude (Anthropic) as co-author.
Fonts: Atkinson Hyperlegible (Braille Institute),
Familjen Grotesk (Familjen STHLM) and
Lilita One (Juan Montoreano), all under the SIL Open
Font License 1.1. The licence texts are in fonts/.
Copyright © 2026 Michael Palma.
Licensed under the EUPL, version 1.2 (LICENSE). You may use, study, change and share
BeWare. If you distribute a changed version, it must stay under the EUPL or a compatible licence.