When I was a teenager many decades ago, all the ‘cool’ kids had pen-pals. We used pen-pal societies to connect to strangers from other countries and the activity was encouraged by parents and teachers alike, because it fostered global friendships, helped understand cultures alien to our own and improved our letter-writing skills.
My pen pal was a girl called “Susie Loth Neilson” (and I put her name out in the open because I’ve been searching for her for decades now) from Sweden. What I remember most about her is that I had lost my mother at that time, and she sent me a pressed flower to lay on my mom’s grave, which made me cry.
When my teenage daughter asks me last week if she may chat with a stranger from a different country, through a program called Omegle, I don’t look at it as an activity that fosters global friendship and an effort at understanding cultures alien to her own, but panic at her poor self-preservation instincts. “But I’ll be careful”, she wails, as I scrunch my face and wonder why my communicating to a total stranger via snail-mail was considered enriching, while my daughter doing the same thing online, is self-destructive.
I ask her for reasons for why I should accede to her request. She lists the following:
- I can meet new people from around the world
- I can chat with people with similar interests
- I can maintain anonymity and opt out if I am uncomfortable
- I can have friends by choice and still hold on to my introversion
- It’s lockdown time, please.
- YOU wrote to a total stranger from Sweden, didn’t you? (I saw that coming).
I can see the point to her request. Human beings are social animals and to isolate oneself from a thriving society is a sure route to psychological downfall. With the ongoing pandemic-induced isolation, the Internet has provided new opportunities to socialize, with chats becoming the new normal party-time. The universality of the internet also enables the socialization to break across geographic and political borders.
Yet, why is the thought of online chats with strangers terrifying to the mom of a teenager? After all, chat services like Omegle play the role of the erstwhile pen-pal societies and allow users to communicate with others without the need to register. Just like the society I used paired me with Susie many decades back, Omegle randomly pairs users in one-on-one chat or video sessions.
The dangers of using stranger-chat applications such as Omegle are many. Many of these are common-sense dangers that as parents, we are always looking out for, around our children, and some caught me by surprise, when I researched into it. Bear with me while I list them out in my order of priority.
- Age-inappropriate content: While users of applications like Omegle can choose to participate in moderated/monitored video and text chat, it is not uncommon for miscreants to enter the chat and post inappropriate content. The “unmoderated” or “adult” options are even more open to sexually explicit or disturbing material. The creators of Omegle themselves disclaim that anyone under 18 using the app must be monitored by parents.
- Catfishing: I knew of this phenomenon, but didn’t know it had a name. Catfishing is when the stranger you are talking to is not who he/she claims to be. While they may pose as being the exact kind you are looking for, IRL (yes, I know the lingo), they may not even be of the gender, age, or sexual orientation they claim. Catfishers use online chat rooms for a variety of nefarious purposes ranging from sexual predation to financial scams. In online chat, if it is too good to be true, it most likely is.
- Trolling: Trolls are the lunch-money-stealing, swirly-giving bullies of the online world. They emerge from under the rock to frequent chat rooms and use their anonymity to wreck people through rude comments. While it is easy for my kid to claim that she can opt out if she is uncomfortable, the damage is usually done by the time she even realises it. Sticks and stones may break bones, but words have the nasty habit of breaking the spirit, silently.
- The “can’t wait” syndrome: This is perhaps where online chats differ from snail-mail based pen-palling of yore. In the online domain, there is a general lack of patience, driven by the urgency of the correspondence. Often times, fingers fly faster than the mind, which leads to over-sharing or inappropriate communication that cannot be reversed, and may cause harm in the long run.
- Are the relationships real? While stranger-chatting may feel like a cure for the isolation during difficult times, the reality is that it is usually superficial. The chat-partner could exit your life suddenly, carrying your secrets, your fears and your insecurities with them, and you would be left feeling exposed because it is no longer friendship. “But that’s alright…I am not looking for life-long friendship, just time-pass”, says the teenager. The adult in me rebels — is a time-pass activity worth all the risk? But that could be just me and my outdated notions of friendship.
That said, it has been unequivocally shown that teenagers use social networks for the creation of friendships — Pew Research states that nearly 49% of teens on social networking sites make new friends online. Perhaps this is the new normal. But if the child (or even adult) chooses to befriend a stranger, chat rooms like Omegle are riskier than some others. The best sites to make friends, not infallibly though, are sites/apps dedicated to specific interests, because members of the sites are usually bound by a common interests and not nefarious intentions — such sites and apps usually have an additional level of check to ensure only legitimate people join. Once such a platform is chosen for communication, it makes sense to take baby steps in disclosing information about oneself.
Jim Reeves sang that a stranger’s just a friend you do not know. That could be true, but a stranger could also be a fiend you do not know. It’s best to stay safe than sorry in the digital world.
Writing credit: Authored by Lakshmi, a Mobicip mom who researches extensively on digital citizenship and internet safety.
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