Chat Room Dangers
Chat room dangers are some of the most serious and risky dangers that kids face online. Chat rooms are areas on the internet where people can enter and type to each other. Chat rooms exist on many subjects, and child predators can be found in any type of chat room that appeals to children. Child predators may not always appear to be predators. They can pose as other children or friendly experts in chat rooms, and your child may let his or her guard down as they become comfortable in the chat room setting and inadvertently disclose personal information.
Chat Room Dangers
The biggest danger associated with chat rooms is that a person in the chat room may convince your child or teen to agree to a meeting. This, obviously, can be detrimental and can in some cases lead to children being kidnapped or even killed. Predators can convince children to meet by promising them incentives, or by pretending to be friendly faces or impersonating someone that the child is likely to meet.
Predators can also convince children to give out personal details in chat rooms. Children may be unaware that it is dangerous to share their full name, address, school, details about what their parents do or where they live, or other potentially identifying information. Even a screen name can be too revealing when a child enters a chat room, and give away information that can lead a predator to your door. This is especially dangerous, since the child doesn’t have to agree to meet the predator or even talk to him or her personally. The predator can simply find the child by the identifying information and show up unexpected and unannounced.
Even if predators do not meet your child in person, other chat room dangers exist. Predators may expose your child to unwanted sexual advances. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggested that as many as one in five children is the target of unwanted sexual attention on the internet. Unwanted sexual information can come in the form of suggestive comments during the chat, links to pornography or other inappropriate information or even invitations for cybersex via private message.
Finally, cyber bullying can occur in internet chat rooms. This can occur even among private chat rooms available only to teens, or chat rooms available only to kids your son or daughter goes to school with. Cyber bullying occurs when people use the internet to harass, make fun of, or otherwise bully someone. This can occur in chat rooms if your son or daughter is taunted, if secrets or personal information are revealed, or if other types of negative chats are directed at your child.
Protecting your Child from Chat Room Dangers
One of the easiest ways to protect your child from chat room dangers is to forbid your child to enter chat rooms. There are many other ways for your child to use the internet and communicate with friends, from Facebook to instant messaging and email. While these sites are also targets of internet predators and can have their dangers, on the whole they tend to be less dangerous than public chat rooms as your child is often not chatting in real time with strangers on these sites.
If you must allow your child to enter chat rooms, speak to your child about chat room dangers and make sure that there are clear guidelines and rules set up. If you have younger children you can insist that all online and computer activity be done in your presence; for older children who deserve or demand a bit more privacy, simply ensure that clear rules have been established for how to deal with chat room dangers.