Chat room dangers
Chatting can be a lot of fun. But chatting comes with some inherent problems. For one thing, it's one of the most addictive online activities. You can completely lose track of time. It's just hard to leave a good chat. Additionally, an innocent remark could be misinterpreted, and you could suddenly be the object of a "flame war," where you are bombarded with scathing messages from people who take issue with you. I recall this happening to me once, it turned me off chatting for months.
But the greatest danger of chat rooms is the fact that they are a perfect place for the unscrupulous to ply their trades.
Chat rooms are highly anonymous. Most don't require any sort of login, short of an email address that can easily be forged. You can then represent yourself as absolutely anyone. Pedophiles will frequently take advantage of this by posing as children themselves, trying to lure young ones into meeting them somewhere offline.
Despite all that, there are well-monitored chat rooms out there. The rule in my house has long been chatting is okay ONLY in WorldVillage's chat room (http:///www.worldvillage.com). There are always staff members there to keep an eye on things. They also prominently post reminders for safe chatting right on the Java chat client.
So it's up to you. Your kids can have lots of fun in a monitored chat, but they can also have lots of fun without chatting.
Internet addiction
There just so darned much fun stuff to do on the 'net that it can crowd out the rest of your life if you're not careful!
Really, kids can get "addicted" to many things. The television is a prime example. A good rule of thumb for the "idiot box" is watch television PROGRAMS, not television. When your program is over, do something else!
The same principle applies to surfing. Make it clear to your kids (and yourself, if necessary ;-) that time on the 'net comes in small packages, and when time limits are reached, it's time to get off and do something else.
Again, diligent supervision keeps these problems to a minimum. Show your kids that you really love them by enforcing your rules and keeping an eye on what they are doing.
|
