Chat Rooms

Use of online chat rooms by children and teenagers has received a great deal of media attention. Although the primary focus has been on the perceived risk to children of contact with pedophiles in this environment, chat room use also has some positive aspects.

There is some confusion over the term chat room in popular usage. Although the term is sometimes used to describe any form of non-email message exchange, the term is used in this entry to refer to a shared online space in which two or more people communicate simultaneously. It is distinct from instant messaging (IM) because the latter is designed primarily around one-to-one communication with known others (although some IM software includes chat-roomlike features).

According to a U.S. survey of Internet-initiated sex crimes against minors reported by Wolak, Finkelhor, and Mitchell, 76% of initial approaches came through chat rooms. However, such crimes rarely correspond to the media stereotype of the prepubescent child lured to an innocent meeting and abducted. Of all crimes identified in the survey, only 1% were committed against 12-year-olds (75% of them female), although 26% were committed against 13-year-olds, 22% against 14-year-olds, and 28% against 15-year-olds. The offenders did tend to be considerably older; only 1% were under 18, 23% were 18–25, 41% were 26–39, and 35% were 40 or over. However, only 5% represented themselves as teenagers (a further 25% shaved a few years off their ages), and 84% of cases did not involve coercion. Four out of five offenders brought up sexual topics during online communication with victims.

Although an increasing number of large companies hosting such chat rooms have either regulated them or shut them down, large numbers of unregulated chat rooms remain, as does Internet Relay Chat, which uses an open standard and is highly fragmented and therefore very difficult to regulate. Talking to strangers in chat rooms is one of the behaviors most likely to be banned by parents (along with giving personal information and meeting strangers face to face). Chat room use tends to be more prevalent (and riskier) among adolescents than among younger children, and there is some evidence that children who use chat rooms are more likely to come from difficult environments and to practice other risky behavior. Chat rooms are not, however, a particularly popular use of the Internet, even among young people. A United Kingdom survey of 9-to-16-year-olds found that 18% accessed chat rooms (O'Connell, 2003), and a NetRatings Australia survey of 8-to-13-year-olds with home Internet access found that 16% of girls and 20% of boys accessed chat rooms, whereas IM was practiced by 44% of girls and 36% of boys. Chat rooms specifically aimed at teens are often popular hangouts, and they participate over a range of topics—often self-help and peer support or music-based rooms.

It is hard to assess the overall risk to young people from unwelcome face-to-face contact driven by chat, but the potential psychological harm from strictly online interaction is a more widespread danger. In a survey of 1,500 U.S. youths (ages 10–17) who went online at least monthly, almost one in five had received an unwanted sexual solicitation online—one in four of which made them “very or extremely afraid.”

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