Yes, chat rooms can be dangerous for your children. But so can walking across the street. The best thing you, as a parent, can do is to teach your child the do’s and don’ts of Internet safety, then do your best to enforce the rules.
The first and foremost thing your children need to understand is to not, under any circumstances, reveal personal information. Never mind telling them not to provide their real name, address or phone number.
Make it clear that predators can find them even if all they did was reveal their school or their friends’ names. Predators have many tricks to make children feel comfortable with them and to get personally identifiable information from them.
Preferably your children should only use chat rooms that have moderators…in other words, people whose job it is to pay attention to chat and step in if things start getting out of hand or inappropriate. Make sure, however, that the person in contact with your child is actually a moderator. You can do this by going to the chat website itself and checking out the list of moderators. You can also use chat room monitoring software to watch what your kids are doing and who they are communicating with.
