Background The use of the technologies in the everyday life brings benefits and risks, being a lot of them in home. According to the World Health Organisation, 90% of injuries to young children occur in or around home. Burns being in this place, the most frequent injury in Mexico.

Methods Multidimensional unfolding is a technique that maps ranking data into a low-multidimensional space that allows for a visual comprehension of the data. 28 parents of Guadalajara, Mexico (15 mothers, 13 fathers), were asked about frequency of use of technologies; involving cooking equipment, light, and heat sources. Then they sorted them in a series of cards, by three different criteria: perceived risk, benefits and the necessity for law implementation in their use.

Results The most used technologies were gas stove, lighter, water heater, iron, matches and microwave. The least used technologies were oil lamp, fireworks, wood stove, gas grill and electric grill. The three perceptual maps obtained have two dimensions, which show two sets of objects each: the subjects (the sample of 28 parents) as numbers, and the objects (each technology) as labels. Parents perceived: more risks from fireworks and wood stove; most benefits from gas stove, water heater, and microwave; and the need of laws for fireworks.

Conclusions Laws are one of the most efficient ways to get people to adopt safe behaviours. Although it is important to consider that, people are more willing to accept laws for those things that they do not use or perceive as beneficial. In this case, parents did not use fireworks and also perceived them as risky without benefit and with the necessity of laws. Unlike the gas stove, being the most used, perceived with more benefits; without risks, and no need for laws. This is the first exploration in Mexico about the theme. An overwhelming majority of burns occur in house and kitchen; it requires further research about overconfidence and optimism bias around technologies.