Chatroulette is a social networking website that allows people to connect with random strangers from all over the world with their webcams. If the person who is selected is not someone you would like to talk to, you can hit "next" and be moved to a new person. It is like spinning the wheel while playing roulette, only with a webcam and hence the name. My friend also told me about how his experience had left him mildly disturbed because every second person he was connected to either wanted to do a strip tease on the webcam, did do a strip tease or asked to see him do one.
Chatroulette started less than a year ago and it has already created quite a stir amongst those who are aware of its existence. The site says one has to be 16 in order to chat, but there is no way of monitoring the ages of those who sign up. The site, according to an article in The New York Times, is operated by a 17-year-old high school student in Moscow.
I decided to see what the hype was all about and gave it a shot. At first it seemed innocent enough. I met another girl from India, who seemed very sweet and polite. It was also her first time and she was just curious to see what it was all about. I then talked to a girl from Taiwan who had trouble communicating in English, so that conversation did not go too far. By spinning the wheel for the third time, I saw the ugly, perverted side of Chatroulette. There was a man who, without warning, showed me things I had no intention of seeing. That was it. I was quite done with the website.
What worries me is that there may be teenagers or worse, children, who want to try this for the sake of curiosity too. Some of these children may be unenlightened enough to think stripping for a stranger is fun. If they are completely brainless they may make the mistake of telling people exactly who they are and where they are from. I worry there are sexual predators or other sick people who will take advantage of this. I know it is possible to record skype video conversations, so perhaps someone may know how to record these chatroulette conversations. With technology being as advanced as it is today, one could grow up to find his or her childhood stripping-for-fun-mistakes posted all over the internet by someone who happened to record the chat session.
The internet is a wonderful medium. It has truly revolutionized the world and life as we all once knew it. I will openly admit, I am quite addicted to it. However, I do believe it gives children an access to things and sites they should not be seeing. Chatroulette is such a site. The problem with the internet is a lack of accountability. It is so easy to just pick any random birth date to prove you are of age to enter a given site. A friend's little cousin, who is eleven, is on Myspace with a fake birth date.
Like Jamie asked in her blog, "Where are the parents?" I ask this too because when I was young, my computer activity was monitored by my parents. If children are getting on Chatroulette and talking to random strangers from all over the world, obviously the parents have no clue. What does a 16 year old need a webcam for anyway? Parents need to either keep the computers of their children in public areas like the living room or their own bedrooms or at the least not give them a webcam. It is right for the parents to give their children privacy but it is also right for them to protect their children from getting into harm's way. In the short-term, the children might resent the parents, but in the long-term they will be safer and more protected from the crazy people waiting to expose themselves on the other end of the camera.
4 comments:
Last year, some of my guy friends were using chatroulette, and were some of the funniest/most disgusting people on there! (and by disgusting people I mean...they were doing dirty, dirty actions)
I'm almost speechless. Chatroulette? Your blog is well reasoned and written. But is this really an ethical problem or an ethical temptation? From the standpoint of the mass medium (the Internet), I don't see the "right" of allowing web content that children might access.
It is an ethical temptation. As I said, I worry websites such as these will get children in a lot of trouble. There is absolutely no right in it at all.
I recently found out about a website called Omegle (www.omegle.com,) which seems to present the same problems as Chatroulett as mentioned above. The site also offered another component where people can simply use text to communicate rather than show their faces (or any other body part.) After trying to communicate with people from around the world (which I find highly important to have exposure to other cultures) I started to notice a few trends:
-Most people were not really looking just for conversation
-A lot of the video users were into excessive drinking/drugs
-ASL?
ASL is an acronym one should watch out for when on one of these communications sites; ASL simply stands for Age, Sex, and Location, commonly asked at the start of a "chat." Anything suspicious here?
Here's another lovely instance of suspicion when my girlfriend (who recommended I check Omegle out) went onto the video portion of the site and met another girl who seemingly had nothing better to do than to propose stripping on camera. What the Africa!? I don't know if this scenario is a product of insanity or the acceptance of the inappropriate and the obscene in our media-oriented culture.
Websites such as Chatroulett and Omegle seem to be promoting pedophilia and cyber-stalking in the sense that there is nothing to regulate what goes on between chatters across the globe. Although it is nice to hear stories from other countries, it is still best to avoid these websites. Unethical? Depends on the situation. Dangerous? Definately.
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