My daughter gave out her cell phone number to a stranger she met in a chat room. And talked to “her.”

We don't know how old Pandora is, but I will say this. I was in junior high in the long ago era of the BBS. My brother and I figured out how to use our modem to access various BBS's (in our area? don't remember the specifics here). I was a trekkie, so I spent a lot of time on a Star Trek bulletin board. I was also having a horrible time in school, completely isolated, depressed, and generally feeling like I was absolutely alone in the world. So I befriended various trekkies via the BBS. Then my parents got the phone bill. The modem was removed from the computer, and my brother and I had our allotted computer time drastically restricted. A few weeks later I got a phone call from an adult. It was one of the trekkies I'd been confiding in, making sure I was OK. Since I'd been severely depressed and suddenly stopped signing on, she was worried about me. After hearing what happened, she understood and said a few encouraging parting words. We never spoke again, but I've never forgotten that moment. In certain ways, it helped to save my life. TL;DR - I wouldn't assume that all contact between your daughter and people online is negative. Arm her with the skills to take care of herself, surely, but remember that not everyone is a monster.

I love how you trust random strangers on the Internet to teach you how to impress on your daughter that trusting random strangers on the Internet is DANGEROUS!!! I wouldn't be worried about the "gave out some info" aspect of this at all, what is a bit off is the "didn't tell you about new online friend" aspect, and that is probably adequately explained by the fact that your kid knew you'd overreact. Working on that might be a better idea.

Going in with guns blazing like you describe is the best way to royally piss your daughter off at you and set your relationship with her towards rocky ground as she grows into a teenager. You need to explain to her, calmly and with compassion, that you would be worried about her doing this if it were a person online or a person in real life. That, no matter what, you want her to be safe and that this is a serious topic, like what do in case of a fire or if someone gets hurt or why you should lock your doors. It's a matter of safety, not just of you wanting to control her. But look. Kids make friends in lots of different ways. My best friend, my roommate, the guy who has saved my life more times than I can really remember, I met him online, in an IRC chatroom. I'm still in touch with a group of these people, and at this point a lot of them have paired up and gotten married, and there's a 3rd child of the group on the way this spring! I had my first kiss from someone I met online, and it was SO much better than if it had been some yucky guy I'd have had to see every day in school, you know? It's about an equality of information. If someone knows your phone number, you need to know theirs. If someone knows your address, you need to know theirs. Arm your daughter with knowledge and respect, and trust her to come to you if she has any questions or needs any help. Don't make online friendships into a furtive, secretive act that she can't talk to you about because you're going to go off on her about them. Let her know that you're going to be keeping an eye on her online friendships, just like you make sure the kids she knows IRL are good apples, you know?

I don't think scaring the bejesus out of your kid is the optimal route. I do think having a sit down talk, so it's clear you're serious and worried, about why you're serious and worried is the right approach. What you're trying to do is get your kid (you don't say how old, but I'll assume pre-teen) to not share home and contact info with total strangers. And that people on internet sites may not actually be kids or trustworthy. for what it's worth, the leading questions you describe are what anyone interested in talking with your kid, even another kid, would ask If you call Giovanna, no, don't record it. Depending on where you are, this may be very illegal. And consider this, what if you get a kid? Are you going to come down blazing on them? No. Unless you have great evidence otherwise, assume Giovanna really is a kid. Then what? I wouldn't contact law enforcement unless you have better evidence than you've presented here that the person on the other end is an adult and that they knew your kid was a kid.

Disclaimer: I don't have kids. I'm basing my answer on what I think would have worked on me when I was a kid. If Pandora has an "air of Teflon invincibility," then trying to "scare the bejesus" out of her may just make her feel more alienated from you and your point of view—the more dramatic you get, the more she may feel like "Mom is flipping out over nothing." She doesn't want to be told that she's a vulnerable child whose instincts for what's safe and what's dangerous cannot yet be trusted; she wants to feel independent. You might be on firmer footing if you approach this in terms of your right to protect your home, your privacy, and your family. I understand that you're upset because Pandora revealed her location and cell phone number to a "stranger" (who doesn't seem so strange to Pandora), but you might put it to her that she revealed to Giovanna a lot of information that also "belongs" to other members of the family. I suspect Pandora might be more open to you laying down the law that for the protection of the whole family, nobody in the family should reveal your location to individuals whom you meet online. You could also ask in a non-accusatory way, perhaps including Pandora's siblings in the discussion, what kind of personal information she/they think(s) is OK to reveal online and in what context. How do you decide? What makes the difference between ordering something from Amazon, where you routinely give your real name and address, and chatting with someone you meet on ourworld.com? (You should have good answers for these questions, too.) Do the kids think the parents have more freedom online? Do they think it makes sense for the adults in the household to have that freedom, but not the kids? Can they reason through why you put certain restrictions in place? Do they understand that you also put "restrictions" on yourself? (For example, I notice that your MeFi profile does not reveal much.) I think you should not just try to scare them about "stranger danger" but also talk about protecting one's personal information as a general life skill: adults have been victimized by 419 scams, swindled by people they met on dating sites, and disqualified themselves for jobs because of personal information that they revealed on the web or in private email / chat / text conversations. You might also try to think beyond Pandora's heedlessness and consider her motivations. Why do you think she was receptive to Giovanna's overtures? She probably wasn't thinking "I'm going to sneak off to my room, defy Mom, and make myself pedo bait." She was probably getting something she craved from Giovanna: friendship, affirmation, admiration, a confidante, the pleasure of building a social relationship independently from her family? I can only fling out wild guesses. You know your daughter better. Can you empathize with her? What do you think would be a more appropriate way for her to satisfy her emotional needs? What if what you think is appropriate isn't working for her—for example, (just hypothetically) what if she doesn't feel safe with her school friends because they teased her or betrayed her secrets? Giovanna might feel safer to Pandora. If the connection with Giovanna seems important to Pandora, can you imagine any circumstances under which you would allow it to go forward? What if you had a five-minute video chat with Giovanna and her parents, for example? What are your criteria for evaluating the safety of a new social connection?

You likely want to avoid doing anything that will make your daughter hide her internet friendships from you in the future. Nthing this. My mother freaked out over the smallest little thing. Rule: I wasn't allowed to read any books with witches or magic. Result: When I was 7, I read the illustrated Edgar Allen Poe (horror) at school during my lunchbreak, and had nightmares. But my mother thought the nightmares were from watching (innocuous kids show) The Famous Five, so banned me from that... and was puzzled when the nightmares continued. When I was 17, I wanted to travel to a city 2,128 miles away (3,425 km) to attend a political conference. I had saved up money from a part time job for the airfare and accomodation, and I would have been going with a large group of political 16-21 year olds. I was also a very straight-edge kid, with absolutely no interest in alcohol or drugs. Nonetheless, I knew that if I asked my mother if I could go, it would have been "No way!" Result: I booked the airfare in secret, and the whole 7 days that I was on the other side of the country, staying in a youth hostel, my mother thought that I was camping with friends a 2 to 3 hour drive from home. I didn't even tell my favourite aunt (who lived in the city that I was visiting) that I was in town, in case she told my mother. The point that I am trying to make here is that over-protecting kids actually makes them less safe... because they will just hide things and lie, and you won't understand what is going on.

Like others in this thread, I'd like to gently point out that from where I'm sitting, it sounds like you are hugely overreacting. I understand that you're scared, but take a step back for a minute, if you can. Scaring the bejesus out of your child isn't the way to go here, in my opinion. It seems to have been the methodology of choice for the parents of Gen Y, and--in my opinion, anyhow--it was a total failure. I learned quickly that one, my parents didn't understand technology nearly as well as my twelve-year-old self did, and two, any thoughts or opinions that I had on the subject would be ignored, because They Knew Better. I got very good, very quickly, at hiding what I was doing and at lying to them about it. This is presumably not the path you want to go down with your child. Your immediate reaction--that Giovanna is someone to be alarmed about, at least, and quite possibly flat-out distrusted--doesn't make sense to me. This sounds pretty crazy, but most people on the internet are, in fact, more or less who they say they are. In all likelihood--especially given the total lack of ass-covering that they've exhibited--Giovanna's another kid who was feeling bored and lonely. Also, your feelings--that the "don't talk to strangers" thing needs to stick--and your actions--allowing her access to an unmoderated, presumably public chat room--are contradictory. Don't talk to strangers, unless they're online in this chat room, but then you can't talk to them in person or on the phone, because they might not be safe? Who counts as a stranger? If Pandora had been talking to Giovanna online for a month, are they still strangers? What about the kid she met one time at her sister's softball game and exchanged phone numbers with? Is that kid a stranger? New kid at her school--stranger, or not? What counts as "talking to" a stranger? Obviously not a public chat room, but what about PMing someone in that chat room? Text messages? IM? Phone conversations obviously cross a line for you, but where's that line? You need to figure this out for yourself before you take her to task for it, because from your question, it sounds like your feelings on strangers are fairly ill-defined and inconsistent. Don't call Giovanna. Don't call law enforcement. Don't contact the chat site and ask for logs. Talk to your daughter. Apologize for overreacting. (I know it's going to grate, I do, but it starts the conversation by putting her off the defensive, which is super important if you want to be able to have an actual conversation.) Explain that you freaked out and knee-jerk reacted instead of talking to her about it, and you were wrong to do so. Ask her questions and listen to her answers to them without telling her why she's wrong about [trusting people online, personal information disclosure, whatever]. And then if you still feel that she was in the wrong, tell her that--you feel that she's crossed a line, and she needs to not do it again. If you're still wary of giving out cell phone numbers, I think that The Pink Superhero struck the best solution--give her a Google Voice account and let her phone and text people on that. Cutting her off entirely might have the short-term effect that you want, but I doubt very much that it will be productive or effective in the long term.

First of all, ignore all of the people in this thread who have no children is not useful advice and the non-parents are owed an apology. There are many insights here from people young enough to've been on-line during their own youth, and those perspectives are quite helpful. I don't have a lot of other advice because even though I have read your question over and over, I still can't make sense of it. Your hair stood on end over: what games do you like? You "had a freak out of epic proportions, restricted the internet from the kids entirely" and want to "scare the bejesus out of" her, are wondering about calling the police because ?, while wanting to avoid being a "drama queen." Because...innocuous conversation? This stuff is pretty hard to follow for another adult, which makes it reasonable to assume that your kids will have already retreated to don't-trust-Mom-land. I would start by apologising to them for over-reacting.

When I was 11 or so and chat rooms were new, I was chatting with some guy and he asked me for my phone number. Being naive and 11, I gave it to him. So then he called me. But I didn't really want to talk to him, and he kept calling. So I got my father to talk to him on the phone and tell him to stop calling. I still remember the episode clearly, and I'm grateful that he was willing to intervene. He didn't give me any sort of hard time about it. I didn't get in trouble. I did learn that giving out my phone number wasn't maybe such a hot idea. I would hate to think that by your actions you are putting Pandora in a situation where she would not feel comfortable coming to you for advice or help if she gets in over her head, for fear of getting in trouble or getting all her internet taken away. If I were in this situation, I think I would sit her down and say sorry I wigged out, but you should undestand that there are old men who pretend to be girls who try to steal stuff from kids (or insert whatever it is you're afraid of happening, here---I'm not totally clear). And then have that conversation, and then let her make the call, and ask her about Giovanna, etc. But let her make the friend, and stay involved without wigging out.