Chatroulette

Has your tween mentioned Chatroulette to you or have you heard your tween talking about it amongst friends?  It has been around for a couple of years now, but lately I have been hearing tweens talking about it and are very curious on what it is all about. Chatroulette is a free website that lets you chat with random strangers face-to-face from all over the world on your smartphone or computer webcam. Visitors who enter the site can either text, audio or video conversations with random strangers. If someone doesn’t like the conversation then the visitor can move onto the next stranger by pressing “next.”

The website now wants users to be at least 18 years old and prohibits any type of pornographic behavior. In addition, if users experience harassment or witness illegal or pornographic activities, users can report the offending user. If three users complain about the same offending user within 5 minutes, then that user is banned from the service and directed to the adult-only version of Chatroulette.

Bottom line, Chatroulette is not appropriate for tweens or teens. To help protect your tween or teen from using this site, parents can disable the webcam on the computer and laptops. These types of apps can be downloaded onto cell phones also, so parents can block these apps.and websites a with parental monitoring software such as My Mobile Watchdog.