Chatting with friends could be considered the equivalent of calling them on the phone; however, chatting with strangers in random chatrooms is dangerous. Dangers lurk in every corner of chatrooms. The sense of anonymity allows chatters to display hostility that can affect your children. Unless the chatroom puts certain limitations on the chatters, a random chatroom can have disturbing sexual chats, profanities, and an endless stream of stupidity.

No offense to frequent chatters though, but it is quite possible for your own IQ to decrease by chatting with chatters who know nothing more than to ask for pictures, a/s/l or chatters who do nothing else but trash talk others.

Chatrooms are hostile places and they might increase your chances for receiving spam emails. Not only that, you may have stalkers in these chatrooms standing around for unsuspecting children and teens to fall into their traps. This is a bit extreme, but youve heard it on the news. It can not happen often enough to scare teens though.

Parents, do moderate the online time usage of your children. Obsessing with chatting takes time away from book reading and their homework. I do not discourage chatting with their friends, but again, I do not smile fondly on chatrooms. Unless the chatroom is a host for a close-knit web community where basically many people are friendly and they know each other online, a chatroom is not a friendly place to be. You have insults, you have animosity, you have crudeness, and you have sexual predators. For teens who are in absolutely need of advice, chatrooms should not be the first place you go to.

Chatrooms of course have their worth. With projects, instead of three or more way calling, a group of classmates might plan online. However, I will reiterate, I am only discouraging chatrooms with strangers in them. But is not a stranger just a friend you havent made? Sure. But there are better ways of building friends.