Online messaging and chat

Benefits of online messaging

Young people use online messaging for much more than simply communicating with friends. Online communication can help young people build and develop social skills and gives them a platform to share their ideas and help each other out.

Messaging (via an app like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or Snapchat) and texting (via a mobile phone carrier) are among the most popular methods of communication among young people.

A US study by Common Sense Media in 2023 found that a young person received an average of 237 notifications per day and most of these were from online messaging apps such as Snapchat and Discord.

Improve social skills

Messaging gives young people opportunities to develop their social skills in a range of formal and informal contexts.

Online messaging can help young people to:

• appreciate different perspectives
• understand the difference between appropriate and inappropriate behaviour
• become more effective non-verbal communicators.

Help each other

When young people can contact friends their own age, it makes it easier for them to ask for help. They can discuss a range of topics, and even help each other understand things that might confuse them.

Chatting with peers online can help young people to:

• discuss homework or ideas from school they didn’t understand
• talk to a friend about something that’s happened at school
• develop and refine new or creative ideas.

Helping children stay safe

With the rise of messaging apps it's common to worry about your child's safety. But by setting boundaries and expectations, you can help to guide their use.

Keep up to date 

Learning about programs or apps can help when you need to have a chat with your child. 

Check out the Office of the eSafety Commissioner's eSafety Guide and find out:

• age restrictions for the sites and applications your child wants to use.
• how to block unwanted users. You can then talk to your child about how to do so. If you think your child may already know how, you can ask them to show you, and learn from them.
• depending on the age of your child, set up your own accounts and ‘friend’ your child. By doing this, you can understand how the site’s privacy settings work, see what your child posts online and how your child responds to posts made by others.

Talk about dos and don'ts

Defining 'personal information' is the first step to helping young people protect their information.

You could:

• tell your child not to share their passwords with others
• remind them to only give their mobile number and other personal information to trusted friends
• make sure your child’s account settings are set to ‘private’ to control who sees their information
• remind your child to think carefully before they post comments, or upload or send images online.

Make a plan

It's important to have a conversation with your child or teenager about what they do online, and what to do if things go wrong. To keep discussions open and honest, try not to nag.

You can use this as a chance to:

• remind your child to tell a trusted adult if they're bullied online
• understand how they're using their mobile phone
• encourage your child to only be friends online with people they know in day-to-day life.