Real Children on SL?

I am concerned about an article in The Guardian.co.uk which suggests that the greatest number of new members of virtual worlds are genuinely YOUNG girls - even younger than 12. My questions for discussion are these:

How can we prevent this massive population growth of extremelly young children in our community?
Is Zindra enough to hold them back?
Is there a difference between "teens" and "under-12" in your opinion?
How can sl ban disney-zonked ankle-biters from appearing here?
And yes, do our own child avis unwittingly encourage the genuine article?

I must add that while I have no problems with 16 years olds on sl, I am very concerned that this extremelly adult world is hardly the place for 8 year olds or 12 year olds. It disturbs me greatly. Children that young should be involved in healthy actitvities.

They are all on Club Penguin and Neopets, not here.

Pep (has inside knowledge )

ETA: This today - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8177990.stm

Thanks Pep - I dont have kids so dont know much about them. I buy real drum sets for them at Christmas to encourage their musical talents and help their parents.

The best program is apparently one called Net Nanny, the Australian government pre this current one gave it out for free to all net accounts... or even better parents that take responsibility by keeping children away from the net with out proper guidance.

When I first started SL, my son was 12. He was very interested in it at first until he discovered he couldn't kill anything and there was no real "goal". I never let him play,but let him watch sometimes and he finally tried out the teen grid. He lost interest in about a day. So I can't see a lot of young children being all that interested in SL. IMO.

I had a friend who did that once.(Not drums but an equally loud synthesizer type thing) She wasted her money because I threw it out the next day.

The only way I see this being prevented is if people who decide to have children also decide to be parents. IMHO that means spending time with ones children and leading by example, not words. There are hundreds of “suggestions” one could make but imho it all boils down to being a thoughtful, intelligent, caring, loving, truthful, consistent parent. I doubt Zindra alone will prevent much of anything. No one, not LL or the FBI will take the place of real parents so I don’t think SL can do much if there isn’t supervision at home. I personally don’t believe age alone determines maturity. How could an adult having a child avi in an “adult only” virtual world possibly contribute to under age people coming to SL if a parent is doing their job in the first place? I’m sure others will have different views but I’d rather “parent” than have parenting legislated since I don’t think the former works

For girls though the attraction of playing dress up may be stronger. SL has by far the widest clothing options for women of any online place I know of.

Oh Crueeel mummy!
I once got in trouble with a real organist who was totally green and was so into organic food she looked liek a chameleon. I bought her two boys TONS of sweeties as a treat, with me taking them for a trip in London. They puked into the Thames. They were so hyper they raced the buses. She was furious coz they didnt sleep for two days. I honestly didnt do THAT on purpose because they PLEADED with me for chokies and stuff.
I do love buying kids drum sets however

Want to keep the punk kids out of SL, there is a very simple device called a parent. It works every time it is used.

And Jig, I am shocked at you being ageist. A 12 year old is just a 16 year old who doesn't have her tramp stamp and nipple piercings yet.

We (residents and Linden Labs) cannot *prevent* children from getting into SL. Everyone associated with online identity systems admits it's a hard problem with no current solution. You can verify an adult all you like, and then later their child can log into the same account and play on it, and nothing will stop that, much less kids with credit cards (lots of them have them these days) registering on their own behalf.

Assuming they can figure out the verification process at 12, they can get their own account and access Zindra just like the real adults do using payment info method.

The best that can be done right now is to somewhat filter out children. Not many 12 year olds have credit cards, or know enough about faking ID to age verify, so Adult regions will be mostly restricted for them. As they get closer to 18, the probability of having a card, or knowing enough to fake age gets higher, so there will be more getting access at higher ages. Then we just AR them if we think they are underage, which will make Linden Lab force them to prove their age via scanned ID, but even then, the ID could be someone else's

SL *already* bans Disney zonked ankle biters, its against the TOS. But making something a crime does not stop the crime from being committed. As others have mentioned, they need to be kept out *before* getting access, by their parents.

One thing SL *could* do is add a parental control feature, which would lock out using a given PC from logging in to SL without an additional password or other feature. Such features are available for television, to lock out certain channels or time of day.

Another thing they *could* do, but which would impose a huge burden on real adults, is use an offline verification system. That would send a paper letter to the account holder who is trying to adult verify, then require showing the letter and ID in person somewhere (like a Notary or equivalent), and have the third party
sign it and send it back. That would keep out almost 100% of underage people, but it would also keep out 90% of the adults .

You are free to do that kind of rigid verification on your *own* SL land, if you want to be absolutely sure no kids can get in. But Linden Lab is never gonna do that cause its too much of an impact on their business. They have taken reasonable steps, in line with the rest of the adult/porn businesses online: require some kind of ID or payment to access adult areas, and kick kids out when they find them.

I'll believe it when I see it. Empty rumor is rumor. (=_=)

Don't worry about it. They're talking about 3d chat systems and dollhouses, not actual worlds.

PS: IBTLL.

Good point,I have only sons myself. But If I were 12 again,the attraction of dressing up would be strong for SL.

I'm another who believes there are way too many people who make little or no effort to look after their own offspring properly. It's the root cause of many a problem in society, not just for online communities.

Even very young kids are often allowed tv, a computer and internet access in their own rooms these days and allowed to get on with it, largely unsupervised. Then the parents look around for anyone else but themselves to blame when the kid gets into trouble, sees stuff they didn't ought to, or causes trouble for other folk. "It shouldn't be allowed" they whine, "LL/the police/the government should DO something".

Well my advice to that sort is YOU do something, it's your job. Do more to parent your annoying little oiks until they grow up into civilised, decent adults. SL is not for kids and thank the gods for that.

I think LL already do more than can reasonably be expected of them.

--
Aes

I was a bit disconcerted the other day when browsing my 12 year old niece's Facebook to see some (albeit innocent) SL snapshots.

On the other hand .... my 19 year old daughter and her friends universally regard SL as "sad" and give me pitying looks when the subject comes up.

*shrugs*

People I know IRL have told me of creating accounts for their children as young as age three on Second Life; apparently the attraction is dressing up their avatars. They hang out in some "kids" sim on the main grid. (I explained in my shock that SL was for adults and that those weren't real kids playing with their real kids. I don't think they believed me!)

am i allowed to say that they are idiots?(last time i said criminals and someone complained lol)

I thought organic food turned you orange, and gave you long hair and a beard, but I guess you are right.



and a 16 year old is just a 20 year old who......
and a 20 year old is just a 24 year old who......
.
.
.
and a 96 year old is just a 100 year old who isn't dead yet.



By that logic all age groups should be allowed in.

I can see the attraction of dressing-up dollies in SL for some younger children - but most pre-teens want raceing, chasing, goal scoring computer games.

Teenagers are a different species, they start to be into social networking more - but they still like competitive games. My kids are all older now - I did look at the Teen Grid for them, but then decided that SL is my thing and I wouldn't want them here. They have Facebook and the Wii - let me have SL! ... and I'm sure my teens' thoughts tend mostly in the direction of, "Driving lessons - pass test - get car!" now.

Ultimately it is the parents' responsibility to supervise their children and control their internet access. I don't think there is much we can do except report any underage residents that we come across.

Oh FFS - do we really have to talk about this every freakin week.

Kids are going to get into SL. The only way to truly prevent it is if parents decide to actually Parent -- and we know for a fact that too many of them either do not care or do not have a clue.

Period. End of story. Next week the above facts will still be true. And the week after that. And the next month and the next year and so on down the line until our world either explodes or implodes (either is possible due to mankind's stupidity any more).

Ummmm, you apparently don't know Chris and his sarcasm.

People are sarcastic in this forum?
Another illusion shattered.

They're small, cost a lot of money, keep returning no matter how far you drive before tossing them out of the car, have the authority to condemn you to an institution when you get too old and refuse to give them your loot, and take all you loot anyway once they manage to off you.

I -do- think child AVs encourage them into SL, but not too much.

Frankly, Zindra like content encourages teens more-so than child avs encourage pre-teens...
- Which is frustrating for me to admit.