Airtime – Group Video Chat
Video-chat and media-sharing app is fun but not for kids.
Airtime – Group Video Chat
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A Lot or a Little?
The parents' guide to what's in this app.
What Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know that Airtime - Group Video Chat is a social media app that allows users to share video, music, and images from popular websites such as YouTube and Spotify with one another in real time, all while sending text messages and live video and audio at the same time. It has most of the same features as other video-chat platforms but with the added twists of letting users watch videos and listen to music from across the web together. As such, parents can see it as an opportunity to search the unrestricted web since there are no content filters. Teens can use the setting to restrict access to the "rooms" they create or make them public. We'd recommend a careful read of the app's privacy policy; the developers collect and share a lot of content and data with third parties and reserve the right to keep any content that users upload, such as images and video.
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What’s It About?
AIRTIME – GROUP VIDEO CHAT is a social media platform that allows users to participate in group video and text chats while also sharing and simultaneously experiencing content from across a number of web platforms such as YouTube, Twitch, Spotify, and more. Users create publicly joinable chat rooms and invite their friends. Via settings, they can change the "discoverability" of the room to everyone, friends, or friends of friends. They can also have new users request access or leave it open to all. Then they broadcast live video of themselves or search for and share videos and music. If teens don't want to share publicly, they can create private one-on-one rooms for more secure conversation. It's a very similar experience to other video-chat platforms with the added twist of being able to watch YouTube videos and see your friends' reactions in real time.
Is It Any Good?
Though the content-sharing options are cool, the usability and privacy concerns make it less than perfect. It's neat to be able to watch videos at the same time as others in the room, but other platforms offer similar features with much more robust video-chat options and better privacy. Airtime - Group Video Chat does score points for having a good selection of available platforms to share from with very little setup required, so you can get started sharing tunes from Spotify or SoundCloud very quickly. Unfortunately, it can get cluttered very quickly, and it's jarring to get pulled from one room to another when a user accepts your private request, for example. Lastly, there's some worrying stuff in the privacy policy since the developer is granted pretty broad rights to any content you might share, with fairly limited availability to opt out or request content be deleted. While it's clear why teens love this app, parents may want to talk to them about public rooms, sharing content, and broadcasting live.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about your rules about the internet and staying safe while searching with Airtime - Group Video Chat. What kinds of videos and music are appropriate, in what settings, and at what ages? When the internet has no restrictions, there's lots of amazing things to see, but some content can be objectionable, inappropriate, or dangerous.
Talk about the value of sharing with friends. It can be lots of fun to share media, either virtually as with Airtime or in person, but it can offer some challenges, too. What do you do if someone makes fun of what you shared or judges you or it? What if you don't like what they've shared with you? What if it seems dangerous or hurtful to others? Whom should you tell?
Talk about how to protect yourself online. Be sure that kids know what dangerous situations look like and how to get out of them, and understand the limits of what's acceptable to share with others.
Discuss the advertising in the app and on the web in general. What kinds of ads do you see? Are they targeted at you, or are they general ads?
App Details
- Devices: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Android
- Pricing structure: Free
- Release date: February 27, 2017
- Category: Social Networking
- Publisher: Airtime Media, LLC
- Version: 2.16.0
- Minimum software requirements: iOS 9.0 or later; Android 4.3 and up
- Last updated: September 2, 2021
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