Chat-Roulette: DO NOT USE IT

There is a new internet sensation going around called chatroulette.. I had to check it out last night, and I will tell you that the images that I saw were sooo disturbing. Please take my word and just do not use it.

 

Agreed. Without going into lots of details, any of you with children who spend any time on the internet with facebook etc - I cannot urge you strongly enough to get involved with what your kids are doing online. At least talk to them, ask them to show you their facebook. Sit down together, and do not judge or be harsh - a certain amount of "teenage attitude" is going to show on their pages, but that is a far lesser evil than this newest craze.

I know that many of my daughter's friend's parents seem to think that it is too difficult to deal with or who just prefer to remain in an "ignorance is bliss" position which i do understand - technology can be scary sometimes and its hard to keep up with it...but not at the risk of your kids.

However, that said, if you want a reality check - sit down and try chatroulette for 10 minutes - if that doesnt scare you more than perhaps learning some parental control tricks etc then i am not sure what will. I tried it a couple of nights ago and it took 3 clicks to connect to my first "scary looking naked dude doing something nasty"...this requires no verification of age, no set up of accounts etc. A few clicks later and I was connected to an obviously young kid and that made me just as uneasy - I am a 45 year old mom.

My bf is an IT Administrator and recently checked it as well and counted no less than 6-8 "nasty acts" within a few minutes of having gotten onto the site.

even if you have to review this site WITH your kids, then take a deep breath and do so - at least you all will be able to see it and have an excellent context and basis of opening up some communication with them about this opening the door to yet more danger and exposure to bad stuff.

It is very bad news.

 

Thank you for the extra explanation. I was not going to go there and describe what people are doing on it, but yeah it is exactly that.. I clicked 10 times and got 5 guys doing just that.. What on earth has humanity come to.. Things like this make me not want kids..

 

It is sad because I am going to be a first time parent soon and I don't want to be that "annoying dad" who is constantly in my child's business but at the same time, things have changed A LOT since I was even a child. Luckily I am very skilled with computers so anytime I hear of something like this, the home computer will never see it! But things like this come out so fast, it is almost hard to keep track of them all.

 

I have no idea what this is and I dont think I want to know. Thankfully I am not a parent because if I was the internet would scare me. There is something very wrong with some people in this world.

 

My daughter and i made a deal a couple of years ago when she wanted a Myspace account and was too young for it. when she moved to a Facebook account, we had the same deal. She is a minor and until she is not a minor, I shall maintain this rule in my household. She has PLENTY of freedom - and frankly if there is some controversial site or internet sensation grabbing attention, we check it out together. Bottom line.

(and i am NO PRUDE by any means...)

I offered to "lie about her age" and help her register WITH the express agreement (we shook on it) that I would share ALL passwords to her accounts and would periodically review the content with her or....do "random myspace checks".

If she could not agree to or abide by that then she would be forbidden to use MY internet unless it was for homework. I would also hold her cellphone on off-school hours. simple as that. give a little take a little.

She has not been allowed to have her computer in her room, but I do not have to "hover" either when she is on her computer in our livingroom. I am reasonable about my online reviews or her social site pages - if i see anything too harsh or crude she is to delete it or contact the friend to ask them to not do that anymore - i do compromise and maintain a level of tolerance for some of the "typical teen language etc" to hold up my end of the bargain.

In two harrassment / bullying situations that were brewing amongst my daughter's online social circle, I called the parents of the other parties and made them aware.

In most cases all parents had NO idea their kids were even on Myspace and this is when the kids were all roughly 11-12 years old. She was mortified, but that was the deal. It had gotten beyond her control though she tried, therefore it was time an adult stepped in.

This has been a reasonable compromise for both she and I and in a case where she had been receiving anonymous harrassing messages and emails on AIM messenger and became afraid, I was able to trace the IP and provider of the sender - then identified myself as her mother when the person messaged my daughter. I recited their internet provider information and lo and behold we never heard from the kid again. All in all, I think she felt relieved that she was "protected" in that case and that I was able to stand up to bat for her when she was not the offender.

All in all, this internet is not going away....ever. So, it is a whole entity of parenting now unto itself.

Considering that a 17 year old honor student went for a jog in the park this last week and is now missing with the cops holding a local sex offender in connection with the case, this issue cannot be stressed enough.

 

There are a lot of freeware, shareware, and retail software programs that block porn sites and other sites of your choosing. You can also do what I did for a friend who is raising 4 boys. I installed Windows SteadyState and got rid of access to Internet Explorer on their user profile. I set up another profile named Internet that was password protected. That profile allowed access to the internet but the boys have to have their mom type in the password. That, plus a filter program protected them. Don't get me wrong, these are very good boys....I just want to help my friend keep them that way. It's just like security measures in a retail store. It is said that if they want to steal, a customer will be able to steal. All security does is remove temptation so that the honest person remains honest.

Allowing children/teens to have unfettered access to the Internet is just plain irresponsible. If I ever would have seen some of the things that are on the net as a kid, I think it would have scarred me for life. You guys have never seen porn on 3Reef but trust me, that isn't for a lack of the porn-purveyors trying. The mod's were doing an excellent job at deleting their posts quickly and Matt did a lot of work to make sure that it is harder for them to join.

 

+K to you for keeping in touch with your children. Those social pages can be brutal. I have heard many disturbing stories of what happens to people when things get a little too serious on those sites and could have been prevented if the parents monitored what was going on.

 

I'm glad you mentioned Facebook. Her oldest kid is on it but it is on a Gmail account that I set up strictly for that purpose. She gets email notifications on all posts on his account and I also gave the passwords (Facebook and Gmail) to her ex-husband. I doubt he checks that email account nor facebook but he can if he wants to. I do know that she checks that email.

 

Just make sure you change your passwords often. I was a very bright kid and getting my mom's password was no problem at all. I could do anything I wanted on the computer because I had that knowledge. But if my mother would have changed her password, it would have made things a little more difficult. If you set up your computer to prompt for an administrative password before anything is installed, you can greatly deter a child's curiosity.