Understanding the IM World
Instant messaging (IM) has become the most popular online activity for children and teenagers today. More than 90% of kids 12-17 years old have instant messaged and 49% are IM’ing each day. With the growth in cyber bullying, it’s probably a good idea for parents to understand IM and what to watch for to protect our kids.
There are now four primary IM systems – AOL, Yahoo, MSN and the new Gtalk from Google. AOL is the most popular in the U.S. especially for teenagers and is called AIM (or AOL Instant Messager). Each of the four systems is currently incompatible with each other (AOL IM’ers can’t chat online directly to MSN IM’ers, for example).
As a parent, I suggest that you get involved in your son or daughter’s IM world and register an IM address. To do so, first find out what IM service your child uses first. Then go to that respective service and register a free IM account (for example, for AOL IM go to http://www.aim.com). Then ask your child for their IM address to put in your “buddy list” and ask them to put your IM address in their buddy list. Then regularly start an online conversation with them to get used to instant messaging. For example, when our son comes home from school and we’re not home, he might IM me at the office to tell me he got in the house ok and I can remind him to take out the trash.
If you share a computer in your family room, for example, or provide a computer in your child’s bedroom, you may want to track their activities. In most IM services you can review the “logs” of their IM conversations by turning on “logging” in the preferences area of the IM application they use.
Finally, it’s probably a good idea to protect your child by reviewing with whom they are IM’ing. Some IM clients allow parents to approve who they chat with online. Doing this and reviewing the logs of their online conversations will allow you to help protect your child from cyber bullying and other offenses online.
One last tip, if you see your son or daughter type “POS” (one of the thousands of acronyms IM’ers use), you should know that it means. Parent Over Shoulder. For other acronyms, go to http://www.acronymsonline.com.