Chat Roulette: A Gamble We Can Do Without!

When I first started giving Internet workshops in 1995, there were a few
sites that I used to give people a snapshot of what the web was all about. The most popular of these sites was called WebRoulette. You would click a button and be taken to a random web site.

But this post is not about WebRoulette. These sites still exist though WebRoulette has long since been bought by a casino site. Random web site generators still exist, but be careful. According to Norton Safe Search, some harbor spyware, but this post is not about spyware. It's about the 21st century version iteration of this phenomenon, Random Video Chats.

You read that right. If you go to chatroulette.com and click the start button, your web camera will start up in one window and you will be face to face with a random stranger in another.

I first heard about it in a Facebook post from Kerstein Creative that said, "The most unusual, intriguing, weird, frightening concept in social networking I've read about yet. (Can't say I've seen it, because I'm a little freaked out by it.)" and pointed to this article in the New York Magazine. http://nymag.com/news/media/63663/

After reading the article, I had to check it our for myself. The results were very much as described in the article. Here's a snapshot of what I saw. It really reflects the part of my block description that says "with great latitude given in the definition of human."

In a four minute period I saw 66 males and 7 females mostly in the teens and 20's. There were 22 connections that had their cameras blacked out and 6 "others". Others were cameras pointing at signs, walls, or other object.

The disturbing part was that of the 66 males, 6 were X-rated. There was one set of breasts displayed and unquestionably the most bizarre connection was this one.

Do I even have to say it? A web camera in the hands of an unsupervised teen, is an invitation to trouble. I understand that they might use it to talk to grandma or aunt Tillie, but do you want them talking to this guy? If your child has a web camera, at the very least, have a long talk with them!

Time to Change Our Focus

First it was predators, then it was cyberbullying, and now it is sexting. The news media is treating us to the fear dujour. They generate reactions that are at best, narrow in focus. It's time to end this kind of narrow focus, take a step back and look at the problem differently.

When you come right down to it, the problems we are seeing stem from kids being kids in an environment that has a lack of adult oversight and guidance. When we do try to provide guidance, they often fail to respond, because they more than know we do, or at least they think they do.

WiredSafety has always know that kids will listen to kids before they will listen to adults and that they will listen to adults if we give them the credit and respect they deserve. That's why long ago, Parry Aftab established Teenangels, groups of teens who are trained by WiredSafety and law enforcement to become experts in cybersafety. We learn from them, they learn from us, and they train others in online citizenship.

The idea of online citizenship is what it is all about. There are many different kinds of online abuse, but pretty much all of them can be prevented if we create good cybercitizens.

MTV, WiredSafety, and others have been working together to empower youth to take positive action, to take ownership for their personal behavior, and be part of the solution rather than the problem. Teens will be working with teens to stay on the right side of that thin line between appropriate and in appropriate behavior at http://www.athinline.org .

Part of that effort is offering teens an opportunity to win $10,000 by coming up with innovative digital ways of stopping online abuse, as well as offering an opportunity to work with MTV and a $75,000 budget to make their idea a reality.

Another part is giving teens a voice and a platform to talk to other teens as done on the site and on Facebook by teens such as Casi. http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=192141552130

Of course, if you are reading this from school you can't visit the Facebook link. So here is the blog entry in two screen shots. Just click on each small image to expand.

Harvard, tech firms seek to create safety Net

It's a big step in the right direction, but regardless of what this task force accomplishes, it will only be a part of the solution. Without education and increased parental involvement, children will remain at risk.