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What is Periscope? An app review for parents

What is Periscope? An app review for parents

Periscope is a wonderful tool used by people and businesses around the world to connect with their clients. It is also an app that has the potential to be dangerous for teens and children. Watch the video and read the post to learn more about this application.

What is Periscope?

Periscope lets you explore the world by watching and creating live broadcasts. When a broadcaster is live they’re sharing video, audio and location (which is optional) with viewers. Viewers can interact with the broadcaster in real-time using messages and hearts. You can follow people to get notified in the app or watch from links posted on Twitter. These broadcasts are called “scopes” and are posted for 24 hours for viewers to see and then they are deleted. If a user wants to keep a “scope” they can capture their scopes using Katch.me. The most popular Periscope resource is PeriscopeTV (PeriscopeTV.me), which posts popular scopes and has a guide of the very best scopers. The age limit for Periscope is 13 which is really young.

The story about how periscope started is fascinating. Periscope was developed by Kayvon Beykpour and Joe Bernstein. Beykpour and Bernstein came up with the idea for Periscope while traveling abroad in 2013. Beykpour was in Istanbul when protests broke out in Taksim Square. He wanted to see what was happening there, so he turned to Twitter. While he could read about the protests, he could not see them.

They started the company in February 2014, under the name Bounty. They raised $1.5 million by April of 2014 to help fund the project.

Periscope was acquired January 2015 by Twitter before the product had been publicly launched. Periscope was officially launched on March 26, 2015.

On August 12, 2015, it was announced that Periscope had surpassed 10 million accounts, just four months after it was launched. It was noted that over 40 years of video was being watched per day. (40 years of video a day? Wow!)

Let’s take a look at it. (Look at the application)

Now, here are some things that parents should consider.

Parent concerns

The app is live streaming an event. Unlike Youtube or Instagram where there is time to think about what you are posting. With this app, it’s all happening at the moment. Teenagers aren’t known for making great decisions so it would be wise for parents to talk to their children about the digital footprint they’re leaving.

Another issue the respect of privacy for another person. Say your teenager is “scoping” a party where people being the video are unaware of being filmed. What if it was your child. Proper social media ettiquete should be discussed and rules put in place like, “it is inappropriate to film or take pictures of people without their permission.”

Perhaps the most obvious concern is the potential for the sharing of inappropriate content or streaming sexually suggestive video to others. Parents beware.

The app does not store broadcasts forever but it is possible to save a broadcast using other software. A video can exist forever online.

If your child is using this app

If you recognize the Periscope icon on your childs device and have concerns, please talk to them about it. Use the skills from the Smarter Parenting website to help you work through solutions and come up with a safety plan for your child online. Using the skill of Effective Communication can help you talk about online safety. The skill of Preventive Teaching can also help your child know what to do in case they run into anything inappropriate online. The skill of Decision Making will help you both make wise decisions about social media use and online safety. Use these skills. They can help protect your family from online dangers.

Next week we will review another app. Please visit the Smarter Parenting website for more tips, lessons and ideas. Subscribe to us on Youtube and follow us on social media.

Until next time, be safe in cyberspace.

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