Chat rooms provide a way for people to communicate information to others via text, webcam, or in a graphical multi-user environment (like World of Warcraft.) Chat rooms can be very helpful to some in providing an easy way to communicate with a large or small amount of people in a real time situation.
After reading "A Rape in Cyberspace" and discussing the many controversial issues within the article in class, I felt very two sided and unsure on how I felt about what happens in some chat rooms.
There are many websites in which people can chat, and they have become far more advanced from what the chat room was like in the article. People can now pick a topic they want to talk about and easily go in and chat. Now people who want to engage in sexual conversation can easily access others who also want to engage in this type of conversation by simply going into the chat room that best describes what their looking for. Sometimes it is simply just a chat and two people go away with what they may or may have not wanted. They may or may not talk again, but it stayed within the virtual world and never entered the realms of something that would happen face to face, like what happened in "A Rape in Cyberspace." On the other hand, it may not always be just a chat and the person on the other end of the chat may want a real world engagement not just a virtual one. It is in these instances that a chat room can start to become unsafe, and the information you post or tell others willingly can sometimes end up putting yourself at risk.
A huge issue that has been growing since the Internets popularity has increased has to do with internet predators. Internet predators use an alias and often act as a young child in childrens or teens chat rooms and talk to them and lure them to "hang out" outside of the chat room. Usually the intent of the internet predator is not good and most sexually molest these children they have met online in the chat room. In Wisconsin, agents who work on catching these internet predators and putting them behind bars have seen an increase that has quadrupled in the past ten years. One of the agents even went on to say, ""I don't think we've made significant progress at all, our community leaders don't even know how bad the problem is. The general population has no idea."
This youTube clip shows how easy children can get lured by internet predators.
As the internet has advanced and become cheaper and faster, the internet predators have also become better at what they do and more cautious about being caught with the invent of tv shows like "Catch the Predator." Last year alone, there were 3000 arrests having to do with Internet crimes against children. However, that was not nearly the amount of people online performing these crimes. Agents have a hard time cracking down on these predators and say they need more people to help with the arrests and time to find these online predators. One agent even asked, "What's more important these 10 speeders getting tickets or this kid not getting sexually molested?"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29793814/
Should we continue to allow chat rooms for minors to exist? Or should the security measures to allow someone into a chat room be greater? Should chat rooms have such open topics where people can participate in cyber sex? Or would that violate our freedom of speech? How did chat rooms evolve from a safe place of communication online to a place where one could be singled out for an attack from a predator? How can we make the internet safer for the younger generation to browse safely? Is there another way to eliminate internet predators?
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I think it is terrible how these innocent children can so easily be lured into these traps. In my opinion i think that their parents need to be more aware of this. Its true, the general public has no idea about the dangers of chat rooms.
ReplyDeleteHowever, your right if we monitor what conversations are happening online, and get rid of chatting for children online, it could possibly be violating the idea of free speech. I feel as though if more people learn about the dangers they and maybe even their children are putting themselves in we could lessen the problem. Not saying that all online chatting is dangerous, but its better to know and to be cautious then to end up in a sticky situation.
You bring up valid questions to how to deal with child predators in chat rooms. Yes, something needs to be done to deal with this growing issue of attacks on children, but we also have to ensure free speech. I think it breaks down into two things; first the online chat rooms should create certain chat rooms that have explicit rules regulating what can or cannot be said within that certain chatroom, second the parents need to keep a closer view on what their children are engaged in on the computer at home.
ReplyDeleteIf chatrooms were designated to only allow certain types of talk and all other would be regulated would help seperate the predators from children. Having the user agree to the terms would then not effect someones free speech because they know that in that environment, certain things cannot be said. Just like for movies, PG, PG-13, R, etc., chatroom should have regulations and rules to what can be sent across to possible youth.
Parents knowing and caring what their child is involved in on the internet is the next big issue at the front of the issue. I think most parents see the computer and internet as a thing to let their children waste time on and let it be a baby sitter. Though it is not ALWAYS possible to know, parents with a little more interest and caring and regulating their children by themselves can help save youth from being preyed on and abused by sex predators. The internet and chat rooms can serve as an important and valuable source for information and connection between people, but protection for children should be dealt with.
I definitely agree with the points you have brought up. It is such a disturbing topic, but something that needs more attention from the public. I have always had negative feelings about chat rooms. I feel like they are extremely risky and sketchy places. Other social networking sites such as Facebook can serve most of the same purposes a chat room does, but with safer regulations as you can change your privacy settings to how you would like. While I was reading this I thought that having an age restriction in chat rooms would be the best idea, but how do you go about doing that? Facebook first started out as a college-age site, but younger kids were able to just put in a different age and still be allowed access. I don't think there is any way to regulate that, which is unfortunate. Also, chat rooms are equally as dangerous for a 12-year-old as a 24-year-old in most cases. I think the most important thing, like Enoch says above, is just helping parents become more aware of what is accessible on the internet and how easily it is for kids and teens to get involved in these dangerous chat rooms. Good post!
ReplyDeleteYou bring up many valid points, and a lot of questions to which I do not think we have answers to.
ReplyDeleteI think that with any form of technology it can be good or bad. Because of this I think the public always has a tough time trying to catch up to create and enforce laws that restrict the negative behavior from these technologies.
Also along side this, is that I think as a general public we need to investigate the sociological and psychological behaviors that predators engage in, and how to correct them. It is a negative and bad behavior.
I completely agree with what you said! It's sad how dangerous chat rooms, which were once a simple and fun place to chat, have become. I remember when I was younger and first got aim messenger and visited all sorts of chat rooms just to see what they were like. Even in the kid friendly ones there were people in them that would try to start flame wars and start inappropriate conversations. I agree that something needs to be done, but I don't believe chat rooms will ever become illegal. We need to figure out a way to prevent such behavior and increase supervision in these sites.
ReplyDeleteIt's crazy the direction technology has taken our world. It's also unfortunate that for something that was created with the best of intentions, in many ways we have become forced to question whether it is doing us more harm than good. Though in the case of Internet predators it may be a little extreme to question such. It is a scary thought to have children so vulnerable to these activities and it's like you quoted, that the population in general does not know the severity of these crimes. The show "To Catch a Predator" is one of my favorite shows. There is nothing I find more satisfying than to have these creeps placed behind bars. I personally advocate a stricter punishment for those that participate in these activities because it is not just the initial, simi-innocent meeting on the Internet, it's as you said, what can occur afterward. How do we stop something that is becoming so rampant throughout our communities, especially when our communities aren't even aware that they are taking place?
ReplyDeleteShould we continue to allow chat rooms for minors to exist? Or should the security measures to allow someone into a chat room be greater?
ReplyDeleteWell I don't think we should "allow" these chat rooms to exist, but can we really change that? I don't think we can. Minors can always lie about their age or who they are online to get around the restrictions. Even if we tried to put better security measures on these chat rooms, I think it would just make the minors come up with more lies and make them upset. But, if there was not a way for the minors to get around it I think this would be a GREAT idea because then adult conversation would stay out of the hands of children and hopefully cut down on some of the predators.
It truly is sad that children can become victims of molestation over the internet, but also how easy it is for a predater to be able to pose as a child in chatrooms. I am very familiar with the show "To Catch A Predater" and also on the mass ammounts of people who are getting caught trying to molest these underage kids. I think you have brought up some serious questions that need to be answered fast so this kind of misuse of the internet will stop.
ReplyDeleteI think the safest way for kinds to not become victems of sexual predaters is to not have children participate in chatrooms at all. Although internet sefety is important and is taught quite often in school, it still leaves a window of opportunity for children to become victims in chatrooms. Even if a child is using their internet safly smarts, they can still be fooled and tricked into falling into a predater's trap. If children stay off of these chatroom sites all together then it greatly reduces the likleyhood of communicating with a predater on the internet. Although children will complain that they want to talk to their firends online and that it's their right of speech to be able to talk via the internet, isn't is better to be cautious then giving children what they want and have them run the risk of becoming a victim of sexual molestation?
This brings us a lot of hard issues that right now people don't have the best answer to. Some people won't let their children on chatroom sites, while others feel that educating their children about the dangers of the internet and practicing safe internet usage is enough to keep their children away from predaters. It seems to to me like there needs to be some kind of national guideline that people should follow collectivley. Either educate children or not let them on these sites. But what is the right on?
How does this same idea play into social networking sites? After all, arent they just glorified chatrooms? SHould children be allowed on these sites as well since they can pose the same dangers as regular chatrooms or are these sites safe enough for children to use? How old must a child be in order for them to be able to make the right decision about visiting online chatrooms? I think you have opened a lot of doors for many questions and a lot of research to find these answers, if an answer even exists.