Cart before the horse?

Umm....Read Robin's blog and found this;

"Anyone whose birthday indicates they are between the ages of 13 and 17 is invited into the Teen Grid. Although there is currently no perfect way to verify that someone is the age they give us, we want to make sure that the teens on Teen Second Life can be confident they are dealing with other teens, and not with adults who do not belong on the grid. Therefore we are reinstating the payment information requirement for anyone entering the teen grid."

While I'm all for the reinstatement of payment information being required on the Teen Grid to protect our children, isn't this a little rediculous?

Example; Child finds out about SL. Child looks over all options (kids are smart these days). Child find he/she would need to ask parents for CC/PayPal to join Teen Grid. Child finds he/she can lie about thier age and join the Main Grid for free with no requirement.

Given the above options, I'm pretty sure most teens will just join the Main Grid, lie about thier age, and simply keep thier mouths shut as to thier actual age. Unless mommy or daddy looks over thier shoulder, and knows what SL is, they are not going to even know thier child is on an adult grid.

On the other hand, any adult that wants in the Teen Grid (and I won't go into the reasons why), all he/she has to do is supply thier own payment information, lie about thier age, and keep thier mouth shut.

While restricting either Grid to payment information relies on the "honor system", this seems backwards the way it is set up.

Teens would be more apt to go to the Teen Grid if it was under open enrollment and the Main Grid required payment information. Less hassle of bothering the parents.

Niether way will prevent adults who wish to lie about thier age from going to the Teen Grid. The laws governing pediophile, however, would be a major deterant, I would think.

While I would opt for the Main Grid requiring payment information, and the Teen Grid open enrollment, I think both requiring payment information would be best. Having the Main Grid open and the Teen Grid with requirements makes absolutly no sense to me.

Why was this done this way, and are there future plans to change this? If there are plans, can we (the residents) know what the generalised plan is? Any information would be appreciated for controlling panic, future planning ourselves on how to manage our second lives, and for current parents to help them help thier own children as they join the world of Second Life as responsble Residents.

~Jessy

While I know there are untruthful people out there, I don't think it's quite as bad as you suggest.

We are continuing to look at other types of age verification for both grids. For now, or priority is to keep the Teen Grid a welcoming and safe place by requiring payment verification (i.e. adults will have a harder time being anonymous on the teen grid) along with a warning (not yet implemented, but ready to be added) for adults trying to access the teen grid.

Subsequent work will have us giving land owners greater control for deciding who should access their land, and ultimately we'll have age verification in place.