Net Family News: Online-Safe Resources for Kids and Families

Online-Safe Resources for Home & School

All about chat (December 12, '00 issue) - tips, safe sites, software, and good advice from the experts

Given that…

Even for the most Web-literate parent or teacher, chat can be the Great Unknown in cyberspace.
For many teenagers, on the other hand, chat is the No. 1 reason to go online.
Chat is the part of cyberspace where kids are more likely to run into trouble if they haven't been given a few simple pointers.
Many of you asked for info on chat in your responses to our Subscriber Survey.

It's time for a focus on online chat (i.e., real-time communicating by typing text into a Web page/"chatroom"). For perspective, we called on Childnet International, a London-based nonprofit organization that educates kids and parents worldwide about the Internet.
Until early this year Childnet was probably best known for its annual international children's Web design awards. But in February, when they received an email from a father asking for help for his family, the organization's staff quickly became some of Britain's foremost experts on online chat and chat safety. The parents were dealing with the impact of a case involving their 13-year-old daughter, who had been sexually assaulted by a pedophile she'd met in a chatroom. The pedophile, who had lured her into meeting him offline, pleaded guilty and this fall was convicted (details here). Childnet helped the family in two ways: by handling for the family the considerable media attention the case got and helping them channel their own tragedy into a public education campaign - by creating ChatDanger.com. If this is a new subject to you (and you're not alone), a great place to start is ChatDanger.com's "Parent's Guide." Click on "What is Chat?" in the Guide's pull-down menu (we can't give you the exact Web address because of the way the site's designed).
We asked Stephen Carrick-Davies, the Childnet person responsible for ChatDanger.com, what it is about chat that attracts kids. "I think the key thing is that children love to assume a false identity - it's the idea of role-playing…. When encouraged to take on a wonderful persona, they clearly enjoy that." Chat, he added, is a kind of electronic playground where anybody can be anybody, whether they're children or adults.
"By and large, playgrounds in the offline world have some kind of care and supervision - they're not generally inhabited by strangers." E-playgrounds, on the other hand, aren't places where kids or parents have the benefit of all the sensory clues about people and situations (sight, sound, etc.) that they'd have on a physical playground. That requires some basic wisdom on the part of chatters of any age, and - in the case of children - alertness on the part of parents. It helps if the chatroom is monitored by responsible adults (examples below), but there's no substitute for parental awareness.
We asked Stephen for specifics on what people of any age, especially kids, need to be alert to in chat. Here are the "five indications of inappropriate contact" he gave us:

Somebody constantly asking for information without volunteering much about themselves e.g., lots of questions about a favorite band or team.
A lot of messages from one person.
Requests for photos, personal contact information (phone number, email or street address, or the school you attend), or other private questions.
Requests to meet offline.
Lots of compliments or any appearance of excessive interest in you (appealing to the vulnerability of children who might feel isolated or excluded).

As for parents, trouble signs can include a child being unusually secretive about online activity or minimizing what's on his/her computer screen whenever you come into the room. Solutions include keeping computers in high-traffic places in the house, taking as much interest in the people a child is meeting online as at school and in other social settings, and - best of all - generally being involved in a child's online experience.
Though in many cases it's easy to be intimidated by kids' fluency with chat, IM, and other Net technologies, don't be. Just ask your child in a very positive way to show you how to use chat, Stephen suggested. It can be a wonderful opportunity for parent-child communication of a mutually respectful sort.
Now the only thing missing in this discussion is Web sites offering safe chat for kids (i.e., monitored by responsible adults) and the less reliable software option. For child-safe chat and other resources, Childnet publishes another great Web site that's uniquely international: the multilingual LaunchSite.org, "providing interesting ways children can link together around the world using technology."
In the Meeting section every site with safe chat and discussion boards includes a list of the countries involved, as well as details on the site's online safety practices.
Here are some other great Web resources this week's international research has pointed to:

Basic chat-safety tips & a banner: Childnet has four that spell "CHAT": "Careful (people online may not be who they say they are)"; "Hang on to your personal information"; "Arranging to meet [offline] is dangerous"; and "Tell your friends or an adult if you come across something that makes you feel uncomfortable." These are spelled out in a rotating banner that anyone can download from ChatDanger.com (click on the link right on the home page). Maybe a favorite Webmaster of yours running a teacher's home page, a school's site, or your family's personal Web page would like to put it in the site.
Filtering software reviews: The UK-based Consumers' Association's publication "Which?" tested the "7 leading filtering products" available in the UK. Many are available in North America as well. You can find the reviews in the Internet Watch Foundation's site. They provide an "overview of the pros and cons of the leading filters as well as further advice on the benefits of children's search engines, restricted Internet service providers, and browser controls."
Chat-related software: 87 software tools in the searchable GetNetWise database claim to have chat safety features (these are most likely restricting access to chat altogether or preventing personal information from being transmitted from a PC). Caveat: These do not provide fail-proof chat safety; there is no substitute for parents' involvement!
Help for UK kids: Britain's national children's helpline, ChildLine, established in '86, does address Internet issues as well (for Britons, of course). The Internet Watch Foundation has a hotline whose first priority is child pornography.
On instant messaging: More than a third of North Americans online use IM at least once a week, according to a recent study cited by the Boston Globe. The Globe adds that the number of registered IM users tops 100 million, and it's being offered by more and more software companies and Web sites (e.g., Yahoo.com).