MXit parental control

Rudolph Muller

Rudolph Muller is the editor at MyBroadband and covers telecoms and broadband news. Rudolph comes from an academic background, but left the University of...

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MXit has been the target of many complaints over recent months, often associated with teens running off with older people who they have met in online MXit chatrooms.  Many observers feel that these complaints are unjustified and that parents are blaming a technology for educational or social problems.

Despite the fact that MXit may not be directly responsible for sporadic problems that occur through using the system, the mobile chat and information sharing service has introduced a new parental control for chatrooms.

“The development of functionality to disable public chatrooms for minors within MXit will commence shortly and we aim to implement this feature before the school holidays”, say Herman Heunis, CEO of MXit.

“The merits of this have been under discussion for a very long time and we feel the time is ripe to test the water. More and more young children are being banned from MXit by their parents but unfortunately this doesn’t prevent them from signing on to other internet chat services all over the world, where they may not have the same protection as MXit provides, such as age restrictions, moderation, profanity filters and the report abuse process.”

MXit however warns parents that the new system should not be seen as a replacement for taking responsibility for their kids’ actions online.

“Giving a phone to a youngster with internet access requires a parent to set the relevant rules. We urge parents to go to our website and read the safety features at http://www.mxit.com/web/parents.htm,” the company said.

“Technology used correctly is a wonderful addition to our society, but requires maturity and responsible behaviour. We will evaluate the uptake of this feature during the school holidays and monitor the general behaviour of our users before we make a final decision on whether to implement it permanently for our RSA and international user bases, and in what form.”

“This solution will ensure that concerned parents of young users can disable the use of all public chatrooms via a password. The enabling of chatrooms again will require the exact password to be sent to our service from the particular MXit account. This service will be free of charge.”

MXit parental control discussion