Yahoo Teen Chat

In October, 2005, Yahoo shut down the popular Yahoo Teen Chat. Why? The trendy social network made a gruesome discovery. They had unwittingly promoted sex between minors and adults through the Yahoo Teen Chat rooms. Yahoo purged those chat rooms within 24 hours of becoming aware of them, but was it enough to protect teens?

Drastic changes shot into place restricting chat rooms to users 18 and older, and closed Yahoo Teen Chat for good. The elimination of the teen chat options limited chat room usage to adults, but the company faced the dilemma of how to prevent children and underage teens from signing up as adults. By June, 2006, Yahoo voluntarily removed or barred use of about 70,000 user-created chat rooms.

Little did chat enthusiasts realize that Yahoo Teen Chat’s elimination was a precursor to the discontinuation of Yahoo’s free online chat across the site.

Today teens can be part of the Yahoo community through a Yahoo Family Account. A Yahoo Family Account allows parents to add children to their account. This gives teenagers permission to access email, message boards and instant messaging with parental supervision. Responsibility to protect the child or teen from harmful content rests with the parent—not Yahoo. Teens active on message boards are no longer segregated from adults and are now protected under the administration of “family” supervision.

Yahoo Teen Chats opened unsuspecting teens to sexual predators. Teens continue to chat elsewhere since the shutdown of Yahoo Teen chat, but instead of focusing on the perversion of sexual predators preying within the widely used electronic hangouts, let’s focus on tips to stay safe in teen chat rooms and other popular venues. Friendship online can be real, but danger lurks when meeting people you can't see. Safe chat room netiquette tips can work to protect teens still socially networking through sites like MySpace, LiveJournal and Facebook.

• Choose a moderated chat room. Moderators volunteer time to keep chat rooms safe. These moderators are usually put in place by the administration overseeing the site.
• Stay in a public chat. If someone tries to talk you into a private room, parents need to know and the incident should be reported to the site administrators.
• Save a copy of your chat, if another chatter says or does something suspicious or inappropriate. If you don’t know how to save the chat, print a copy.

• Don’t sit idle in a chat and say nothing. You don’t want to be mistaken for a "lurker". Explain that you’re new and let the chat continue from there.
• Don’t give out personal information including your real name, phone number, the town you live in, the school you go to or where you plan to be. It’s not even wise to give out your personal email address.
• Don’t make plans to meet someone in person alone, especially without telling your parents.
• Don’t get impatient. Not everyone types quickly and some connections are slower than others.
• Don’t pop in and out of chat rooms without saying something. It’s rude.

Representative Michael G. Fitzpatrick, R-PA received complaints and concerns from parents and educators concerned about sexual predators luring children through social networking sites. He introduced the Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006, in hopes of keeping online predators from contacting teens and younger children socially online. The bill passed in the house in July 2006 and is pending in the Senate.

Online networking is intertwined with today’s culture. Laws can be made, but new opportunities and technology will emerge. A dark side exists within our culture. Pretending it isn’t there or won’t happen to you doesn’t make it go away or keep you safe. Teens and their families need to be vigilant to take steps to not only protect but to educate themselves. For years, children have grown up learning about Stranger Danger and how to act and react if approached or touched by a stranger. We need to update Stranger Danger safety to include online social networking.

Stranger Danger teaches kids how to identify improper touching. These same techniques need to be addressed in the cyber world where teens hang out today and where outsiders infiltrate the perceived safety of online social circles with complete anonymity. Suggestive language, digging for personal information and suggesting underage participants meet privately should be flagged as Danger.

Written by Donna Sundblad.

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