Parents' Guide to

Photo Roulette

By Patricia Monticello Kievlan, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 15+

Share random photos from your camera roll; use with caution.

App iPhone , iPod Touch , iPad , Android Free to try Social Networking
Photo Roulette Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this app.

  • Photo Roulette App: Screenshot #
  • Photo Roulette App: Screenshot #2
  • Photo Roulette App: Screenshot #3
  • Photo Roulette App: Screenshot #4

Community Reviews

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age 15+

Based on 2 parent reviews

jenrichert
jenrichert Parent of 13 and 14-year-old
November 1, 2022
age 18+

Too Wide Open

My 14yo son & his friends love to play this and randomly drop-in pornographic photos. It will also pull pics not just from camera rolls but from texts as well. You cannot filter for porn nor can you report it.
Michellesmithh
Michellesmithh Adult
March 26, 2020
age 12+

Amazing!

My daughters love to play this game with their buddies! It’s a great pass time during these quarantine hours. It’s super fun and enjoyable. They get to look back on silly pictures and old memories. 10/10 from me!

This title has:

Easy to play/use
See all 2 parent reviews

Privacy Rating Warning

  • Personal information is not sold or rented to third parties.
  • Personal information is shared for third-party marketing.
  • Personalised advertising is displayed.
  • Data are collected by third-parties for their own purposes.
  • Unclear whether this product uses a user's information to track and target advertisements on other third-party websites or services.
  • Unclear whether this product creates and uses data profiles for personalised advertisements.
Learn more about our privacy ratings

What’s It About?

PHOTO ROULETTE is a game that shares photos at random from your camera roll and invites other players to guess whose photos they are. To play, users start a game and share their game PIN with up to 10 total players. Then, the app displays a photo and users have a few seconds to tap their friends' names to guess the photo's owner. Players earn points for speed and accuracy. You can select a group of photos to share: If you choose this option, the app invites you to approve random photos from your camera roll before starting a game, and you can clear the selections at any time.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (2 ):
Kids say (1 ):

This developer's website features a user review that pretty well sums up it up: "Picking random photos from your friend's iPhone. What could possibly go wrong?" The answer is: a lot. If you allow the app to share your photos at random, you're sharing every photo on your camera roll. On the tamer end, this could be a bunch of bad selfies. More worrisome could be more personal photos or snapshots people often take for reference, like a photo of a password or credit card number. If you take the time to select photos from your camera roll that feel okay to share, this app could be a lot of fun. It's a fun idea to try to guess whose photos are whose. Unfortunately, that approval process takes a while. Before you get started, the app wants you to approve almost 100 photos, and some users might get impatient and just move on. It would be better if you didn't have to approve quite so many photos so you could get going more quickly. Moreover, you can't control what other people do, whether they're sharing their own iffy photos or taking a snapshot of something you've shared, and there's no way to report or block inappropriate content.

If you play with close friends and family and use it cautiously, Photo Roulette could be a fun party game. it's actually pretty interesting to think about all the photos we take and then forget about, and it might be funny to revisit your own forgotten photos and to talk with your friends and family about just how many photos we accumulate — and how much information those photos might reveal about us. At the very least, this app may inspire you to clean up your camera roll and delete a few photos that you'd rather never see again!

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about family rules for privacy and social networks. Talk about when it's OK to share information like photos and what kind of information should be kept private. What are your rules around your kid using Photo Roulette? Who can they play this game with? Why should they be cautious about who they play with?

  • Families can talk about the long-term effects of sharing what are assumed to be private moments through apps like Photo Roulette. Should they play this game at all? What are the risks?

  • Parents also can remind kids that nothing, once posted to the Internet or shared, ever really goes away — and it can come back to haunt them.

App Details

  • Devices: iPhone , iPod Touch , iPad , Android
  • Pricing structure: Free to try (in-app purchases for full access and more features $.99-$9.99)
  • Release date: February 26, 2020
  • Category: Social Networking
  • Publisher: Photo Roulette AS
  • Version: 36.0.5
  • Minimum software requirements: iOS 11.0 or later. Android 4.4 and up.
  • Last updated: March 16, 2020

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