Internet Chat Habits Of America Teens:

Internet chat rooms are a fashionable means for teenagers to communicate with other teenagers from all over the globe. Sadly, they are the place where many teenagers can easily get involoved in problems.

Most chat rooms are not chaperoned and those in them may use anonymous screen names. Consequently, many kids feel shielded talking with other people convinced that their identity is guarded. However internet chatting frequently provokes vulgar language, harassment, inappropriate exchanges, and cyber sex activities.

Teaching teenagers about proper behavior in these chat rooms is vital to their protection.

An internet monitoring study in Canada uncovered:

• Nearly 3 out of 10 (or 28%) of parents do not realize or are not sure whether or not their children talk to total strangers on the net.

  42% of parents and or guardians don't choose to read through the content of what their children see and or say in chat rooms or via instant messaging.

• 95 percent of parents and guardians couldn't understand general chat room language that kids may use with people that they're conversing with.

• 30 percent of parents allow their teenagers to use the internet in private areas of the home which include the teenager's bedroom or an office in the home.

And more statistics on teen peer pressure, internet bullying, Here are sexual internet use:

• Less than 10% of sexual solicitations and only 3 percent of undesired exposure occurences were reported to authorities like the local police, an Internet Service Provider, or a hotline.

• About one in five have received a sexual appeal or advance over the Internet in the last year.

• One in 33 got an aggressive sexual solicitation, which is a solicitor who asked that they meet them in person somewhere, called them on the phone, sent regular mail, cash, or presents.

• One out of four had an unsought exposure to photographs of nude people or people engaging in sex in the last year.

• One in 17 teens was threatened or badgered.

Parents and guardians see the Internet as learning devices mostly, where for teens, the Internet is a link to their peers.

Learn how to really surf online, visit web sites like MySpace.com and make sure you are informed about adolescent Instant message speak – that erratic, truncated form of speech of abbreviations and acronyms that allows kids to conduct full conversations with the fewest number of characters.

Ever changing technologies can be a moving target for parents to handle, but knowledge is the important thing for guardians to competently oversee their teens' Computer and internet use.

An even simpler answer may be to download a free software program entitled Teen Chat Decoder. With this program, you can decode those perplexing acronyms your child writes and reads in online chat rooms, instant messenger (or IM) and cell phone text messaging.