Chat Rooms – Why Parents Should Be Concerned

Chat Rooms – Why Parents Should Be Concerned. Chat rooms have been around for many years and when it first came on the scene, the technology was the start of online social networking.  Simple to connect to, easy to get involved and with no profile to setup, subscription to join or bulky software to install, chat rooms have proved popular.

A chat room is typically an online space hosted on a website that allows for any number of people to communicate, on any decided topic for that specific chat room. Users have the ability to create a chat room on any topic they desire.

The early days of chat rooms go back as far as the 1980’s, but chat rooms became very popular in the 1990’s when the internet was in its infancy.

Chat room technology was basic and was perfect for a dialup modem, as conversation was text based, which meant that communication was instant, due to the small amount of conversational data transported over an internet connection.

A typical chat room has a moderator, who manages the conversations and has the ability to kick a user out or ban them, if they break any of the rules applicable for that room. But not all chat rooms have a moderator or administrator.

Using chat rooms sometimes require the user to download a small piece of software, such as an IRC client. This software allows users to connect to various chat rooms around the globe, including New Zealand. There are certain commands used with this technology that allow the user to find their way around chat room technology.

To participate in a chat room, a user creates a name for themselves, which should be any name not related to their own identity. Anonymity is the key in chat rooms. No one knows who you are.

Features within a chat room allow for a member to correspond with any other member ‘privately’. Once a member agrees, a private window is opened, whereby any conversation taking place within that window is between them only, and no one else.

Chat rooms are regularly used to ‘hookup’ or connect with members of the opposite sex (or same sex), and there are sometimes chat rooms dedicated for this purpose. In such cases the rooms may be named to suggest this.

WebCams or web cameras opened up a new world in chat rooms. Users have the ability to see who they are chatting to, provided that the requestor of the ‘webchat’ clicks ‘agree’ to open up the webchat session. WebCam chat technology has also opened up a lot more sexually related activity and deviant behaviour.

In New Zealand there are about 20 sites hosting  chat rooms. Topics range from innocent through to flirtatious and sexual.

It is well known that chat rooms are a hive for sexual predators. In the US alone, there are over 65,000 predators online at any one time. These people have many tricks they use to make a person feel comfortable and give personal information freely. They are dangerous.

As a parent it is important to discuss chat rooms with your children. Help them understand what they are about, and why it may be dangerous to use chat rooms. Explain to them about predatory behaviour, and how strangers have ways of trying to obtain personal information. Teach children that under no circumstances are they to give over their address, full name, phone number, school or even city that they live in.

Teenagers have been known to involve themselves in sexual activity via webcam. This is very dangerous and creates a negative view on society for those participating.

Installing monitoring software can help a parent identify internet activity, and used positively, will help parents guide children to more positive aspects of the internet.