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Story: Children's charities call for end to 'anarchic Internet'

Posted by: Anonymous (Sunday 5 October 2003, 5:15 PM)

As an observer of the growth of the chatroom phenomenom it does rather seem that Microsoft is reacting on the basis that its services COULD be used as a channel for people to entice children into danger. It is of course a high profile stunt which is about as appropriate as banning cars because they kill people sometimes! Their main motivation is that they dont want to spend money monitoring a free service and so will set up subscription services instead! I would have thought the Microsoft corporation was making enough money out of all of us to spend a little in this direction!

However shocking this may sound to readers children are sexual sometimes and yes of course they engage in chats on the internet which many parents would disaprove of. As a parent I always took a responsible interest in what my children did on line ( I monitored for any real dangers) but I never made any attempt to censor them because I recognised it as the same playground talk that I used to have as a child - I was confident in them that they would not go off and meet a stranger and even the offical reports on chat rooms admits that this rarely happens. One of my concerns is that their activities will switch to even less monitored environments like the mobile phone. I have observed in adult chat rooms that there are a great many younger people who lie about their age to be able to chat with older more experienced people out of choice. I have no idea whether that is a good or bad thing but what I do know is that they will still seek and make contact with older people, maybe in less safe environments. Of course the rather inapropriately named "grooming" for real meets is not something I would wish to see growing but on the other hand many young people need a safe environment where they can express and explore the sexual feelings that many parents refuse to believe they can have. I would guess that many young teenagers engage in this kind of on line chat as an alternative to actually doing things they are not quite ready for in the real world.

However for older teenagers, and up into adulthood, the internet has provided a means of making friends - particularly as it removes many of the barriers that hit at peoples self-confidence in the real world - looks weight etc. I have seen people coming out of their shells this way - particularly young gay people who are wanting to test their sexuality in a less exposed environment.

Which one of us, if we believed we were gay for example, would want to open the discussion with our parents or people that we know?

Chat rooms are just another playground with all the risks and dangers present in any playground. If we seek to protect our children from all danger at any price soon there will be no playgrounds. Learning about risks and dealing with them are an important lesson in growing up and without these lessons they will be poorly equipped to deal with the people they meet in adult life.