Teens on the Net, a whole new lifestyle

By Tantri Yuliandini

JAKARTA (JP): Only a few years ago, when a girl between 15 to 17 years old was asked about her hobbies, you could expect answers like "reading, swimming or hanging out with friends."

Nowadays, "chatting" is increasingly becoming the most popular response to that question.

The dictionary defines "chat" as "light familiar talk". But in the context of the teenager, it runs through the medium of the Internet, not the schoolyard or behind the teacher's back.

The Internet has revolutionized the way people think and act in more ways than we could imagine. And as with all new technologies, the young are the ones that quickly adapting to it.

To think of all the benefits that could be reaped from the Internet, chatting has now become the most popular application besides electronic mail or e-mail.

So when you think your sons or daughters are hard at work doing their homework on the PC, check on the modem -- they might just be shooting messages into cyberspace.

Internet chat has even given us a practical and cheaper way to communicate in minutes to people hundreds of kilometers away.

With Internet chat, making friends with complete strangers has suddenly become the easiest thing in the world to do. Gone are the usual inhibitions, the shyness, the awkward silences, the lack of self-confidence that usually accompany meeting new people.

And at an Internet chat room, popularly known here as a "channel", dozens of people with more-or-less the same interests are brought together to chat.

"Hi asl?" (Hi age, sex, location?) flashed a pop-up message on a computer screen.

"Ok 13/f/hell =P u?" (Ok 13/female/hell) came the reply. (=P is a sideways-on sign that denotes a coy facial expression).

":-X 16/m want 2 talk 2 me?" the little window flashed again. (In using :-X, the respondent has given a sideways-on symbol of a pouting face).

Chatrooms are sprouting like leaves on a tree.

Especially bolstered by the many Internet kiosks dotted across the capital -- most prominently near schools and universities -- local chatrooms are growing in number, especially on the more popular chat engines such as MiRC and Yahoo!Chat.

The easy access and affordable prices available at warnet (Internet kiosks) have made the kiosks popular hangouts for teens chatting up a storm.

Chatrooms can be as global or as local as the author makes them. There is an "Indonesia" chatroom, as well as "Jakarta" and "Bandung" chatrooms.

Specific communities have their own special rooms, such as "parkirtimur", for those who frequent the eastern parking lot of Senayan sports complex, and "sobatpadi" for fans of the popular Indonesian band Padi.

Nuniek and Kemal, two teenagers who like to chat at the Station Net Internet kiosk at Blok M Plaza, said they most often use the "bc.bar" chatroom, a room named after their favorite hangout place, the BC Bar, in Central Jakarta.

In fact the "bc.bar" chatroom was where they first met and later became friends.

"But I only met her when the chatroom members organized a gathering last week," Kemal said, explaining that many local chatrooms organize gatherings outside cyberspace so that the members can also socialize in person.

"It's given me a whole new set of friends," Nuniek explained.

Some find the love of their life in chatrooms, where they meet, converse and later date off-line.

And because of the global nature of the Internet, the scope for finding a potential mate is not limited to your own neighborhood.

Wulan, a 27-year-old employee, met her Indian boyfriend while chatting on Yahoo!Chat. Three months later the man visited her in Indonesia and they started going steady.

"Marriage may seem far off for us, but we keep in touch either by e-mail or mostly by chatting," she said.

Long distance relationships have become a lot more common now that people can meet over the Net.

Although the problems faced by such relationships remain the same, mainly over communications, the solutions are sometimes a little unique.

"An American girl once asked me to call her Indonesian boyfriend for her to find out why he hadn't chatted with her for two weeks," Wulan said.

It turned out the boyfriend had gone down with measles and couldn't log on.