A bit off topic, but does anyone here know much about streaming? Could use advice.

[Odessa333]

Apologies if this deemed too off brand; my thinking streaming games is popular these days so people here might know a thing or two.


Anywho, my nephews wants to be streamer, broadcasting himself playing video games and such. I want to be the supportive Aunty I can be, but I don't a thing about streaming. I bought him a video capture card last Christmas, but it apparently came with no software or instructions and was too hard for him to figure out (he's 9). Having struck out once, I want to do better for his birthday, looking into what a kid could use to stream that is easy to use. I'm out of my league here, and hoping someone could offer some advice. Thank you for your time.

[Anymage]

{Scrubbed}

My biggest questions are what platform he wants to start on, what sort of content he wants to make (Edit: Like PC gaming or console gaming, and what sort of games he likes), and how actively involved his parents will be in watching him. Like you can figure out the basics by just looking around Twitch for a bit and downloading the app to see what works, but one of the channels on the front page right now is a girl letting you watch her do squats in a tiny bikini so parental oversight is strongly encouraged.

[meandean]

I don't mean to poop on you trying to support your nephew's hobbies, but I don't think a 9-year-old should be publicly streaming. You have to be 13 years old to get an account on Twitch (the most popular streaming site). I don't consider it literally dangerous, but understand that complete strangers are going to show up and type whatever they feel like typing at him. Handling that requires a certain amount of maturity/perspective/however you want to put it.

What you basically do is get a program (free ones, such as OBS, work perfectly well) that is like an A/V mixer. At the most barebones level, this program needs to capture three "sources":


Video output from the game
Audio output from the game
Audio input from your mic

With a capture card, #1 and 2 might be considered the same source, so the program would only list two sources. Anyway, that's all the part you worry about after you figure out the larger questions. Perhaps he can "practice" and not actually broadcast anywhere. But again, it'll be four years until he's the bare minimum age to even have a streaming account, at least in Twitch's opinion.

[Rynjin]

As mentioned, at 9 years he's too young for this sort of thing; by the Terms of Service of any streaming platform if nothing else.

Maybe start by getting him a simple video camera? If it's something he's interested in, he can get comfortable filming, experimenting with angles, content, etc. a step at a time, and most importantly in a way that won't be putting him out in front of the world to see if he does something he might be humiliated by later.

[viberslavko]

Yep, 9 year old is way too young.

Streaming is business now.

Maybe you make it as complicate as you can in order for him to quit. :)

Anyway, streaming can be very problematic for young kids. My coworker kids had anxiety issues over views on their YT channel. And they are 10-11 years old!

[Jimorian]

As many have said, the Terms Of Service of all streaming/video platforms require the account holder to be 13+ (this age is consistent across services because it's tied to a U.S. Law protecting children on the internet). An alternative is to allow him to record videos for friends and family directly for fun and practice.

On the technical side of things, does he play games on console or computer? If console, that's where the capture card comes in because you have to send the video/audio to the computer via HDMI plugged into the capture care, then the computer records the game and microphone/webcam via a program like OBS Studio (which is free). If he plays on computer, then you only need OBS Studio.

[Algeh]

If he wants to make recordings of himself, and you're looking for a product to buy that would improve the quality of those recordings, one useful upgrade might be to get him a better microphone than the one built in to his computer. The right microphone would improve the audio quality of his recordings quite a bit. There are a wide variety of different mics out there used by different podcasters/streamers/youtubers depending on their various use cases, so that would probably be something where you'd need to do a little research into what he has now and what makes sense for the kind of videos he'd like to make. Maybe even a gaming headset with a particularly good microphone? Although I seem to recall that kids are supposed to have volume-limited headsets and I'm not sure anyone has bothered to make one with a decent quality mic built in. Personally, I tend to be a fan of lavalier microphones for most "recording one person talking with minimal background noise" uses, but those might be too fragile for a 9 year old.

As a lot of other people have mentioned, it's extremely unlikely that he'll find a place to stream online at his age, because of the US laws limiting collection of personal information to users 13+ unless they want to jump through a lot of additional hoops about parent permission and data privacy. I don't think there's a site that has chosen to jump through the hoops needed to allow for the creation of such kids accounts for streaming, because it would be a PR and moderation nightmare to deal with and hard to monetize. I'd give any site that just seems to be doing a really bad job of checking user ages the extreme side eye and avoid, personally.

If he wants to post pre-recorded videos, I think that some sites (possibly even YouTube) may permit that if a parent is the account holder and the one actually uploading the videos (presumably after watching them and deciding that it's appropriate to share), but there are often additional restrictions about videos that even have kids in them so it'd be something for the parents to investigate to see what the current state of things is. (Personally, I've chosen not to post any videos with kids in them on the publicly-accessible internet rather than investigate the details of what hoops are involved, but I know YouTube has something about that as part of the upload a video checkboxes.)

If he wants to make pre-recorded videos to share with a limited audience of his family and close friends, maybe something like Google Drive would be a good place for his parents to post them instead and then share them with specific people so only those people have access to the videos. (That's probably the compromise I'd offer my theoretical 9 year old - you can make all the videos you want, and then we can share your favorites with Grandma/your friend from camp/etc., but they are not getting posted publicly for a few more years at least.) Caveat: I know nothing about regular user Google Drive, it's just what I use at work through a Google for Education school district where we all have district-managed accounts to share recordings that have either students or copyrighted material from our curriculum in them with the specific group of students in that class while not making them accessible to people who aren't logged in to the specific student accounts I've shared the videos with. (Videos would tend to be me talking about something from the textbook and having students ask/answer questions about it, that sort of thing - very different from video games.)

[veti]

I'm pretty sure YouTube is fine with game videos made by kids of nine or younger. My daughter watches a lot of videos like that. ("Janet & Kate" started posting Minecraft videos aged eight.)

It's a lot less potentially stressful than streaming, and seems like it should be a viable way to work out the hardware and software issues, get some practice, and generally be ready to deliver a much more polished performance when he's old enough to get on Twitch.

On the other hand, it's not something I'd encourage my kids to do. It opens them to some of the nastier aspects of the Internet, and, possibly worse from his point of view, the overwhelmingly likely outcome of being totally ignored.