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You Are Here: Home > Information > Internet Definitions What Can You Do About It? When you are dealing with preteens & young teens, you should insist that your children chat only in rooms & channels monitored by live monitors, not bots. I also recommend that children & preteens be kept off IRC, which is still considered the Wild West of the Internet, until you’re sure they can handle themselves. Even then, make sure they stay in the clean channels. You should also check to see whether the monitored chatrooms are monitored twenty-four hours a day or just during certain hours. Many parents have complained to me about choosing a chatroom or chat service because of the fact that it monitors chat, only to find that the monitoring is available only during certain hours. Most of the responsible children’s chatroom areas post the hours when they are open & when monitors are in attendance. Smart kids’ sites have their chat operators close the chatroom whenever monitors aren’t in attendance. You should learn how to log all chats, & teach your children to do the same. You can make a copy of the conversations in the chatroom & channel you’re chatting in. When things go wrong, that log can be invaluable in reconstructing the chat. Each log application works slightly differently, so you should refer to your chat service’s help files to learn how to set up the log. You don’t need special software to do it, since most chat programs have logging capabilities built in. |