Chat rooms are like dial-in conference calls, where you can stay for as long or as short a time as you want and communicate by keyboard rather than by telephone. Instant messaging allows for immediate real-time communication with another person who is logged on to the Internet. Most parents are concerned about the easy access children have to pornography on the Internet or other potentially damaging information such as hate messages and information on getting and using weapons. Even if you're not looking for these things, they can be hard to miss. Even accidental contact with this variety of harmful material can have its effect.
Parents are also rightly concerned about contact with strangers in chat rooms.
In a recent survey, for example, about one-third of the readers of a young people's consumer magazine who had been online complained about other users' trying to get their password or using bad language. Adults as well as children have been victimized by sexual predators through the Internet. The world of Cyberspace puts children and adults, often in the privacy of their own homes, in contact with violent, hate-filled, or graphically sexual material that is ordinarily kept outside mainstream society. Isolated individuals in front of a computer screen can lack the necessary moral and social support to resist what they are being drawn into. Such sites can exert great influence on the social interaction of both adults and children.