© Getty ImagesTeens have been hanging out online for 20 years, but in 2017 they’re doing it on group video chat apps.
Almost every day when they get home from school, Gracie, age 16, and Sarah, age 14, open the
app Houseparty, where they can video chat with to up to seven of their friends at once. The sisters, who live in Danville, Calif., use it to socialize and collaborate on homework, for 15 minutes to an hour. When they first open it they may be chatting with just one friend, but everyone they're connected to on Houseparty gets a push alert that they're "in the house," and, soon enough, the room fills up. It might even spill over into other rooms, growing organically, just like a real house party.
Teens have been hanging out online for 20 years, but in 2017 they're doing it on group video chat apps, in a way that feels like the real thing, not just a poor substitute. Ranging in age from adolescents to their early 20s—the group loosely defined as
"Generation Z"—
these young people are leaving the apps open, in order to hang out casually with peers in a trend some call "live chilling."This phenomenon is made possible by the sudden ubiquity of video chat, in messaging apps such as
Kik and
Facebook Messenger, as well as stand-alone apps including Houseparty,
Fam,
Tribe,
Airtime and ooVoo.
Houseparty, which launched in February 2016, says it reached one million daily active users within seven months. Fam, launched in December 2016, reached a million downloads within 12 days, says co-founder and chief executive Giuseppe Stuto.
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