Parents want their children to be able to surf the Internet and reap the benefits of having a home library that can rival few in the country. The enormous amounts of useful information that can be found unfortunately brings with it sites that are inappropriate for children. The largest draw with children seems to be chat rooms. A child can talk to others from around the globe and experience different views of daily life in these areas. The biggest problem with this is that you cannot tell who the person behind that screen name truly is.
Pedophiles enter children's chat rooms looking for children to be preyed upon.
In a monitored chat room, where there is a host or other online employee present all conversation that is inappropriate is dealt with quickly and the responsible parties are kicked out of the chat room. Instant messages also called whispers or IMs cannot be seen by anyone except the party writing them, and the party receiving them. These are not screened or monitored by anyone else in the room and this is how pedophiles find children to prey upon. The largest deterrent to having children encounter problems on the Internet is simply having parents involved in their Internet usage. The most important rule for children surfing the World Wide Web is to place the computer in an area that can easily be viewed by a parent.