When you have a daughter....

[daveymck]

4_2

It definatley seems the way of it these days as I said my stepson is 13 and he has somthing like 150 contacts on his msn and is on there chatting to his mates, schoolfriends and some people he has met via friends in all his free time. They seem to message rather than ring each other so make arrangements etc on there. It does eem to have replaced the phone as the main teen communication medium.

He comes in from school goes on and all you see is all the kids popping up as they rush home and get online.

I have given him warnings about the potential for dodgy people and not being who they say they are etc, and at the moment we do monitor his logs (for our own piece of mind) but I will prob drop that shortly as there aint much going on there.

Most converastions revolve about being bored and talking crap for hours on end in bizarre text speak.

I am pretty open about the internet and email my daughter at 6 has a hotmail account so she can messenger me while I work away and also email her friend who has moved to Dubai (ovbiously I am the only one in her contact list). There are risks of course in letting her have open internet access but I balance that with what I think is the need to become computer literate and aware of stranger danger in all its forms. I was very proud the other week when I got my first email off my daughter she had worked out how to do it herself without being taught by me.

I can see what you are saying but AIM does seem to be a replacement for spending hours on the phone for teens these days.