Omegle – is a free online chat and video chat website that allows users to socialize with others without the need to register. The service randomly pairs users in one-on-one chat sessions where they chat anonymously. Users must be aged 13 years plus and any one aged between 13 and 18 are encouraged to gain parental consent.
Our Concerns – Omegle offers a monitored service and an unmonitored service. The monitored service is supposed to protect younger users from inappropriate content including nudity and sexualised behaviour, however it has a reputation of not being very effective. The unmonitored service is pretty much anything goes and has a reputation for a lot of sexualised content and nudity. We have talked to a number of young people who have used Omegle and all have reported to seeing adult males and in some cases females naked and more often than not masturbating. There is also a lot of reports of users dressing up as horror movie characters and trying to scare and intimidate others by making threats such as “I know where you live” and “I’m watching you”.
In our opinion Omegle is not suitable for children under 13 years of age due to the risk of being exposed to inappropriate and explicit content. Alongside this is the fact the site encourages users to chat and interact with strangers. We also find it hard to recommend Omegle for many users aged 13 and over due to the reasons already mentioned.
For more info – https://www.net-aware.org.uk/networks/omegle/
