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What Parents Should Know About Stickam

Video communities are popping up all over the Web. Stickam is one such community, but with more features than I’ve seen of late. Translation for parents: for the most part, it’s just another place for people to post video and photos of themselves doing things in the privacy of their own home that they wouldn’t dream of doing in public. Think MySpace, but with improved online interaction.

When reading their “What is Stickam?”, it talks about how you can place streaming video, music, and live video chat on your site or blog with relative ease. What I find interesting is that they’re not playing up what I think most teens would be most interested in and that’s the ability to login to chat rooms and interact with other people while actually viewing them via web cams.

It’s really almost like sitting across the table from someone and having a conversation with them — really boring conversation at times. Maybe I’m too old to see the value in such jabbering:

Austin: heyy sup ya’ll?
* lemonfrog joined the room.
my_squeaky: hey
* 19733 joined the room.
* patrick82803 joined the room.
vindicative: CHRIS
* Austin left the room.
vindicative: Whos calling me
* patrick82803 left the room.
* 19733 left the room.
revengexx: I HATE THAT MOVIE
revengexx: gawd tht was creepy
revengexx: IT WAS SCARY
punkface aka cupcake: no it was awsome
* prettypantsx left the room.

What do you think?

Keep in mind that you’re actually hearing other people talk while viewing others typing in their conversations just like regular chatting.

It was apparent that some of the participants that I viewed were teens in their bedrooms. That’s a big strike against the parents! Leaving a kid alone in their room with a computer connected to the Internet is not a good combination.

So what’s the harm in people getting together to discuss whatever crosses their minds? Well, what it comes down to is that Stickam is another place to see and be seen by others, which makes it a perfect place for sexual predators to go shopping. Parents need to be aware of places like this and talk to their child about it, should they have an interest in hanging out there.

While playing the innocent bystander in a chat room, I got kicked out for not participating. That was a surprise, but I do find that an interesting feature. Comparing it to offline interaction, it’s the equivalent of some stranger standing next to you listening in on your conversation. In retrospect, that probably seemed pretty rude of me to just “stand” there.

So what’s the take-away on this for parents? Quite simple, really: be careful when you let your kids visit places like Stickam. Chatting has it’s own risks, but when you add web cams to the mix, it opens new doors to places that may be hard to navigate. Like any site, but particularly with online communities, I recommend the parent review what it’s all about and then decide next steps.

[tags]stickam,web cams,online community[/tags]

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