IF used sensibly and knowledgeably, the internet is a fantastic resource that can help children to work and play.

But as illustrated by the case of 12-year-old Shevaun Pennington, it is open to abuse, and there are many possible pitfalls for naive and uninformed young people to fall into.

For a year, the Wigan schoolgirl had exchanged emails with the 31-year-old US Marine Toby Studabaker, before she went off last Saturday to meet him and disappeared.

Fortunately, Shevaun has now been found safe and well and has been reunited with her parents.

But the story has once again highlighted the how difficult it can be to police chatrooms and prevent children from forming unsuitable relationships over the net.

Five million children in Britain have access to the internet and chatrooms.

Stephen Carrick-Davies of the charity Childnet International, which aims to make the Internet a safe place for children, says: "Children love chatrooms because they love the interactivity. They can create their own media, their own content and communities.

Element of surprise

"Internet chat has an element of surprise because you don't know who you are talking to. Children love it because you have to give yourself a nickname and therefore you can almost play a new persona, as if you were on the stage."

Gill Loughran, spokesperson for the parent support charity Parentline Plus, says: "The attraction is that children can leave their day-to-day existence and try out new ways of being and relating with people, all of which are part of growing up.

"If they don't feel very happy with who they are, it is a way of trying out a new identity for a bit - which is harmless provided it doesn't go too far."

But it is this very element of surprise that makes chatrooms open to abuse by people with less than innocent motives, such as paedophiles.

Carrick-Davies says: "The danger is that other people who might give themselves a nickname might sadly be someone who undertakes to have an inappropriate conversation with a child."

Net used to set up meetings

According to research, it is not uncommon for children to set up meetings with people they have met on the net.

A study carried out by the Cyberspace Research Unit at the University of Central Lancashire last year found one in 10 young users has secretly arranged liaisons with "friends" from chatrooms, usually without an adult around.

The survey team questioned 1,369 nine to 16-year-olds and found almost a third had not been warned about the dangers of blind date-style meetings with chatroom contacts.

Meanwhile, another survey carried out at the University of Manchester's Institute of Science and Technology revealed that a third of teenagers see nothing wrong with lying about who you are in Internet chatrooms.

According to the children's charity NSPCC, more than nine in 10 adults in the UK are worried about the threat posed to children by paedophiles in chatrooms. The growing menace is also of great concern to the Government and charities set up to protect children from sexual abuse.

Practical guidelines

Earlier this year the Government laid out practical guidelines for internet service providers about dealing with the threat and parents have faced repeated warnings.

It also launched a £1 million advertising campaign which ran on television and radio to encourage parents to help their children surf the net safely.

In one televised advertisement, a middle-aged man was seen sitting at his computer and when he spoke, he talked with the voice of a teenager.

The Government is also proposing to introduce a new offence of sexual grooming on the internet.

But according to internet safety groups, the answer is not for parents to ban their children from using chatrooms altogether.

Carrick-Davies says: "The internet is a very powerful and positive resource for both education and entertainment, so there is an issue of balance.

"You can't just say, 'We are going to ban chatrooms,' because children will then inevitably go into internet cafes or libraries where they have access to the internet."

Carrick-Davies says parents can take sensible steps to reduce or eliminate the risk of their children being duped into unsuitable relationships.

"Parents should firstly take the time to learn how the internet works. They should make sure the computer does come into a family room and spend time surfing together with the children so it becomes a joint activity rather than something confined to the bedroom.

"They then need to sit down and explain and illustrate what can go wrong, even if the child feels they completely know the person they are talking to.

"Discussing the potential dangers needs care and sensitivity and involves helping them to see the dangers for themselves - most children will respond more positively if you encourage them to be smart or "cool" on the Internet, rather than giving them a list of Thou Shalt Nots.

"Parents need to make sure children never reveal any personal details about themselves in a chatroom. Just in the same way as you are wary of a stranger knocking on your door, make sure your children remember 'stranger danger' in chatrooms and that they never give out information about their school or family, such as address, telephone numbers, photographs, etc.

"Finally, they should not allow their children to meet anyone they have contacted via the Internet without you going with them. They should be especially careful about children using chatrooms unsupervised - especially those which are not moderated."

Childnet international also advises parents to encourage their children to read safety websites such as www.childnet-int.org and www.kidsmart.org.uk.

Parents Online website

The new Parents Online website gives similar advice and also advises that parents encourage their children to introduce them to their online friends.

Loughran says: "Parents should try to be as open as possible with their children about their internet use, and they should have ongoing discussions and set down rules you both agree on.

"This doesn't happen with just one discussion. Over time, parents should endeavour to teach their children what to do when they meet a risky situation, and hope that they have an ongoing dialogue so that the child will come to them and talk to them.

"Simple conversations over meals about who they have been talking to on the internet brings it all out into the open. It shouldn't be something the child does when they go to their bedroom at night.

"Parents mustn't just say, 'You shouldn't do this,' they should explain why not."

But even after all that advice, there are is still a chance that children may get themselves into difficult situations.

Laughran says: "There are alarm bells.

"If a child is on the internet all the time and is not having face-to-face contact with friends, then it should ring alarm bells because people are naturally gregarious."