Parents of young MXit users will be able to restrict their access to public chatrooms on the popular instant messaging tool, through the use of a new password-enabled feature.
"We`ve been holding focus groups at various schools to find out what our users want. And the one thing we found out was that a large number of children were banned from MXit because parents were blaming us for some of the things they were reading in the press," said MXit CEO Herman Heunis.
The parental control feature will require parents to activate it by creating a unique pin code. The pin will then be entered every time the minor wants to enter a public chat space. The company hopes that, by making access more difficult, it will restrict the participation of minors on their chatrooms.
The success of safety features like this one relies on responsible behaviour, Heunis said. "We are not steering away from responsibility. We are trying from our side to do something. But this requires a portfolio of responsibility. Parents need to keep watch over what their kids are doing. Kids need to be responsible and the government needs to keep people safe and others behind bars."
The parental control feature will add to its existing safety features, such as age restrictions, profanity filters and abuse reporting processes.
The feature carries some risk to the company, he said. "We run the risk of losing some of our users. Some people might see this type of feature as not cool and start using other tools. Hopefully, we won`t lose too many users."
The parental control feature will be available on trial in the first week of December - and will only become a permanent feature once the trial implementation is complete. It will be available locally before it is rolled out to international users.
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