Intent of Video Chat Room Users among Different

Intent of Video Chat Room Users among Different Ages and Genders Kailee Culver, Melanie Bauer, & Blaine Peden (Faculty Advisor) University of Wisconsin- Eau Claire Introduction Results Due to a technologically advancing society, many new forms of communication have evolved, such as video chat rooms. • Operational Definitions This graph shows a comparison of the age groups and the type of interaction. Gender and Intent Video chat rooms enable users to convey first impressions to new people and decide whether to create relationships. Video chat rooms usually recommend being 18+, but do not verify age. In fact the demographics of the users vary much. Figure 1. No gender effect in intent. Sexual Intent • If the participants had minimal to no clothing present or showed interest in a purely sexual conversation. Networking Intent • If the participants showed interest in a conversation purely for getting to know a person, such as personality traits. Due to the sexual intentions of some users, young users may be exposed to unwarranted sexual intent. No Intent • Participants disconnected from us before interacting. This study codes first impressions to examine the correlation of demographics (age and gender) and intent of conversation. Discussion Age and Intent We have two research questions. • Are there gender differences in the intent of the conversation? • Are there age differences in the intent of the conversation? The high sexual content could be why they’re popular. Males and females are equally distributed in their intentions of video chat room use. Adolescents have the smallest amount of sexual intent. Young adults use video chat rooms the most and are equally distributed in their intentions. Adults use video chat rooms for sexual purposes more than any other purpose. Figure 2. No age effect in intent. Method This study was a naturalistic observation using the video chat room websites, Omegle and Chat Roulette. In our observations, we did not allow the users to see or hear us. We did not interact with them in any way. Both websites allow users to disconnect, and we observed users until they disconnected from us. The Two Chat Rooms: Omegle & Chatroulette Server connects you to random person from around the world We excluded participants who remained inactive for longer than 30 seconds. We observed 132 participants. We assumed their demographic information and intentions. • 20 females and 112 males ages 15 to 60. Ages were recorded numerically and later recoded into adolescents (≤ 18), young adults (19 -29), and adults (30+) An article from Cyber Psychology & Behavior about video chat room websites says that 75% of users are male and the average of users are 16 -25. Our observations show that our study was representative of gender and age. Incidence of sexual intent is high, even though it doesn’t vary systematically with age and gender. Go to website & confirm age (of 18+) Press the “Stop/Next” button Talk via text or video for as long as user desires Limitations and Implications One limitation of the study was the small number of females, but this may be due to the website demographics. Findings show a small number of adolescent users showing sexual intent, but are often only exposed to it by legal adults. Because of these implications, video chat room websites should more strictly monitor age and content. Parents should take these implications seriously, and monitor their childrens’ internet behavior. Acknowledgments We thank Dr. Blaine Peden for guiding our research and the LTS printing service for their contribution to our poster.