What are your teenage charges doing during your lessons, do you know? This week I got a peek into the wild world of teenage communication via social networking services and sites. It all happened because with the economic hard times upon us I thought I should start using the Mxit service (www.MXit.com) and avail myself to the super low costs on text messaging. While working out how the service worked on my cell phone I thought I would stop by a soccer related chat room to see what was being discussed. Below is an edited version of the ‘chat’ I experienced. I have isolated one conversation thread in what initially looked like total chaos but was in reality a number of different conversations all running concurrently. I have to admit I did not contribute! I was totally immersed in trying to work out what was being said!

KINGLGENERALKIR: Word up son...wat it do

Lu>+: nun mch dad, im jc in da skwl library, yo syd?

KINGLGENERALKIR: nothing much son... u mom dnt want me 2 work Over time.

QUEENLGENERALK: “silence”

Lu>+: lol, y nt

KINGLGENERALKIR: bt son ... its cool my side. Hwz school son

QUEENLGENERALK: lunga hows zinzi|

Lu>+: she iz gr8 mum J

Soccerzone: QUEENLGENERALK hugs Lu>+ .. ok then ..

QUEENLGENERALK: Ppl i must go.. got lots to do..

Lu>+: ima skip ma nxt clas..

QUEENLGENERALK: lunga u wont L

Lu>+: bt its borin

Soccerzone: QUEENLGENERALK gives KINGLGENERALKIR a Kiss on da lips!!!

Lu>+: l8tr parents

QUEENLGENERALK: chat l8tr, me g2g.. Tataz

KINGLGENERALKIR: yeah... we got alot 2 do people, peace.

On reflection and further monitoring this thread proved not to be a case of happy families but rather a group of friends ‘lording’ it up as a royal threesome. Comments posted by the chat room’s other users revealed  KINGLGENERALKIR and QUEENLGENERALK to be minor celebrities within the chat room environment. And soccer? Not a word for the duration of my time there. Later I posted a comment about who was going to be the favourites to win the World Cup next year but my perfect spelling and sound grammar marked me out as an alien, an imposter.... a weirdo? My question was ignored.

Mxit is a South African global phenomenon with a presence in Malaysia, India, Indonesia, UK, USA, Nigeria, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain. Its popularity as a messaging service amongst teenagers is because it offers an extremely cheap deal. It bypasses SMS technology by using GPRS Internet to forward chat messages. Consequently a MXit message costs 1c in comparison to 75c for a normal SMS. It’s not a small concern either. According to ITWeb MXit has a registered user base of over 11 million and sends over 250 million messages a day.

MXit has, however, not escaped controversy in the past. In 2006 it was criticised by You & Huisgenoot magazines who indirectly implied that MXit enables access to pornography and allows paedophiles to contact minor users. This seemed to be confirmed when the News/Actuality programme, Carte Blanche, broadcast a segment where a young girl explained how an alleged paedophile contacted her via MXit.

On the pornography charge the reality is that any Internet enabled phone can access undesirable sites. This is compounded by the fact that unlike your computer there are no filter programs available to screen Internet content on cell phones. Parents and teachers concerned that their charges will go astray should consider having their Service Provider block data services to that particular number.

The paedophile charges are possibly more concerning and MXit has created rules to protect both the users of their system but also themselves. As a user you are encouraged to obey the rules and are exposed to various safety tips. For example MXit advises users to never reveal their mobile number, never give their real name, don’t tell anyone where they live or where they go to school, don’t reveal the personal details of their friends and to keep online relationships online and NOT to meet anyone offline. They have also built into the MXit system some safety features...

·         All teenagers' chat rooms have profanity filters. Swear words are replaced by ##### symbols. ·         A network of MXit and community moderators monitor the rooms on an ad hoc basis.

·         No user profiles are shared.

·         Users are completely anonymous while in the chat room, and as long as they don’t reveal personal information they remain safe in this anonymity.

·         Users can report abusive behaviour. By typing .rat the previous thirty lines of the conversation are sent to a MXit moderator to act on.

My short visit into the soccerzone chat room revealed no obvious threat. Its true there was some suggestive comments made by the learners themselves but the conversation was in the most part innocent. My real concerns were that here I was the outsider and easily excluded but perhaps more pertinent was that these conversations were taking place during class time. Keep an eye out for cell phones and dexterous thumbs during your lesson!

An edited version of this blog post appeared in The Teacher