A recent headline in Virtual World News certainly caught my eye: “FTC Study Finds ‘Explicit Sexual Content’ in Teen, Kids Virtual Worlds.”

Having written several reviews of kids virtual worlds here, I was at first relieved to not see any of them named in the article. Then, I got nervous when I found three of them listed as part of the survey sample: Build-a-Bear-ville, Handipoints and Pixie Hollow. However, after searching the report, the only mention of them I can find is in the appendix list of the survey sample; so, I’m hoping that is a sign that explicit content was not found in them.

But, to make sure, I dug into the FTC’s Virtual Worlds and Kids: Mapping the Risks - a 92-page report to Congress. All-in-all, I think it is rather balanced.

From a “master list” of 187 virtual worlds, the Commission constructed a sample of 27. Six were deliberatly included because they’d been identified as potentially containing explicit content. These worlds were Gaia, IMVU, There.com, Second Life, Red Light Center, and Kaneva - none of which are targeted at children under 13.

Fourteen of the 27 online virtual worlds in the Commission’s survey were open to children under age 13. Of these 14 virtual worlds, the Commission found at least one instance of explicit content on seven of them. All of that was observed when the Commission’s researchers visited those worlds posing as teen or adult registrants, not when visiting the worlds as children under 13 (with the exception of one world named Bots).
In six of these seven kid virtual worlds, the amount of explicit content observed was considered low.

Only in Stardoll, did the Commission find a moderate amount of explicit content. That’s one world I had thought of reviewing, but wasn’t sure it was right for my seven-year-old. Sounds like I might be wise to wait.

It’s interesting to see that they also note: “Because the Commission’s researchers examined these worlds with the express purpose of uncovering sexually and violently explicit content, it is unlikely that a typical user would stumble upon such content unintentionally.”

Almost all of the explicit content they found in the kid virtual worlds was text-based and was found in chat rooms, message boards, and discussion forums. In Stardoll, almost all of the explicit content observed was in the form of “violently explicit text posted on discussion boards. Again, however, none of the explicit content observed on Stardoll occurred when the Commission’s researchers registered as a child under age 13.47.”

Not surprisingly, the Commission found more explicit content in the online virtual worlds that are supposed to be closed to children under age 13 (“teen- and adult-oriented virtual worlds”). They found a greater concentration of explicit content in worlds that permit teens to register.

“Although some of the teen- and adult-oriented online virtual worlds in which the Commission observed explicit content have taken steps to restrict minors’ access to explicit content, their efforts have not fully succeeded. Virtual world operators can do more to limit youth exposure to explicit content. Given important First Amendment considerations, the Commission supports virtual world operators’ self-regulatory efforts to implement these recommendations.”

Some of the things they are suggesting include:

• better age-screening practices
• segregating users by age
• stronger language filters
• more community moderators, and
• parents and children alike should become better educated about online virtual worlds.

That last one is always the most important. Parents should never totally rely on age-screening mechanisms to keep their kids out of virtual worlds they shouldn’t be in — they’ll always find ways around registration restrictions.

It’s up to us to monitor where our kids are going online, teach them how to behave online, and teach them how to keep themselves safe when we’re not there.

As the Commission put it, “even properly registered children should be taught to make safe and responsible choices when communicating online, and to be cognizant of the risks posed by playing games and congregating in venues that may be designed for older audiences.”

What was the ultimate conclusion of the FTC Commission regarding explicit material in virtual worlds?

“Online virtual worlds provide children and teens with educational, social, and creative opportunities. However, as with other aspects of the Internet, youth may be exposed to explicit content while participating in online virtual worlds. Parents, therefore, should familiarize themselves with the features offered by the online virtual worlds their children visit. For their part, operators should ensure that they have mechanisms in place to limit youth exposure to explicit content in their online virtual worlds.”

I think that sums it up nicely.

This is part of a series of posts looking at virtual worlds targeted toward kids.

If your kids watch the same TV channels mine does, then you’ve probably seen the commercials for a new virtual world called Free Realms. My girl certainly saw them and wanted to go check it out, so our series of kid-focused virtual world reviews continues.

Free Realms
Free Realms bills itself as “a fun, whimsical virtual world filled with dynamic gameplay and compelling content for everyone, especially families.” It’s really more of a pure MMOG than any of the other worlds we’ve toured as part of this series. As soon as my girl set up her account (all by herself, except for my need to give her an e-mail to attach to the account) and entered the world, she was met by a character asking her to embark on her first quest. This prevents the “what do I do now” issue that plagues some virtual worlds, but also aligns more firmly with games such as the non-kid-focused World of Warcraft (WoW).

With more than a million people signing up for it in the first week and that number doubled already, it’s on target to be just as popular as WoW, too. In addition to quests, kids can work at a variety of jobs from pet trainer to ninja to miner and others mentioned below. Like most other kid virtual worlds, you can enter and play for free; but, for $4.99/month you can upgrade to get more things like additional job options, and you’ll also pay to purchase items.

The Good
Free Realms automatically limits kids under 13 to “quick chat” - my preferred choice for my youngster because it restricts them to a preprogramed set of words and phrases to communicate. That way you don’t have to worry about them giving out any personal information (but, don’t let that get you off the hook for still having that discussion about what you don’t share online).
Free Realms’ parent controls area also mentions that they intend to implement a feature which will permit you to customize a calendar to set times of day and/or days of the week that your kid will have access to the account online, as well as days and times during which they may play.

The Bad
I’m willing to bet that most of us teach our kids that fighting is wrong, so it’s a little unsettling to see that quests in Free Realms can involve combat and one of the jobs kids can get is called a Brawler. Brawlers are described as being “up for fight anytime with anyone” and they “use hammers, clubs, and powerful kicks to defeat enemies.”
We didn’t run into any Brawlers in our first few visits to Free Realms, but then again, we didn’t run into anyone other than the in-world characters who play parts in the quests. This may or may not be a bad thing, but struck me as odd considering there are supposed to be more than 2 million people in-world now.

The Lessons Learned
I only heard the “rated E for everyone” part of the commercials, but when you really look, you’ll see it is “everyone 10+” and I would reccomend following that age recommendation from the Entertainment Software Rating Board. Even more specifically the rating warns of “crude humor” and “fantasy violence.” We haven’t encountered the humor yet, but as noted above, the violence is definitely there.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Free Realms Still Growing Insanely Quickly [E3 2009] (kotaku.com)
• Sony’s Free Realms game signs up a million users in 17 days (venturebeat.com)
• The free price is working out nice for Sony’s Free Realms as registrants top 2 million (venturebeat.com)
• Video Game Review | Free Realms: Pick a Role, Any Role, Then Live Nine Lives (nytimes.com)

This is part of a series of posts looking at virtual worlds targeted toward kids.

The latest stop on our kid-focused virtual worlds safari took us to a world of cute dinosaurs. Dinokids was a major sponsor of the recent Virtual Worlds Conference & Expo, so I not only got their promotional cards in my conference bag, but also got to watch commercials for them prior to every panel and keynote. Not sure if my little review will give them enough return on the money spent for that placement, but here goes. <wink>

Dinokids

One of the first things that struck me about Dinokids is how game-like it seemed. Not that it’s any different in regards to the games it offers in-world – it’s very similar to most of the other kid worlds we’ve visited in regards to the activities offered. No, when I say game-like, I’m talking about the way your dinosaur actually moves around inside the environment. Not having played many video games in quite some time, I still immediately thought of Mario Brothers when I saw ladders and ropes to climb to different levels. This video illustrates it better than I can explain:

In fact, one of the times my girl seemed to be having the most fun in Dinokids was during a game of chase with one of the few other dinos she met in-world, much like what you see in the video.

Speaking of videos, my girl discovered a movie theatre in-world while I had stepped away. She mentioned finding it, but said it just had some “teenager videos” in it – which I immediately made her go back and show me. Turns out they’re running YouTube videos inside Dinokids that appear to be primarily G-rated movie trailers for kid/tween-targeted moves. Whew!

The Good

Dinokids has a definite focus on parental involvement. When we first explored the world, I noticed two types of accounts – authorized and unauthorized. Having seen the subscription model as the main method other kid-focused worlds use to create cash-flow, I just assumed that unauthorized accounts were free and authorized ones cost. Turns out that both are free, but authorized means that a parental account has been created and associated with the child’s account.

This allows the parent to set several parameters for how your child will interact in Dinokids, including not only the choice between pre-programmed responses or free chat, but also setting time limits for how long your child can be logged in during a day. I really like that one as I’ve often thought about setting a timer when my girl gets on the computer to keep myself from losing track of just how long she’s been sitting there.

Also good is the educational element in some of the games such as the math one in the school building. And, dinos can learn about good citizenship and environmental stewardship by picking up trash around their world and placing it into a trash bin to earn eggs (the Dinokids currency).

One other thing I think I would rate “good” that I think is a unique feature in Dinokids is the camera for snapping pics of you and your friends in-world. I can see this as a nice bonus feature. It’s something you have to pay extra for, but gives your little dino a nice scrapbook of snapshots that they wouldn’t be able to grab via your basic screen capture.

The Bad

I’ve had to rewrite much of this section of my post after making the discovery that authorized accounts didn’t cost. Many features that I thought should have been at least partially available to free accounts are available, they just require that you as a parent authorize the account. So, “the bad” section of the post got a lot shorter.

Free or not, one thing I still didn’t really like was the controls for the athletic games such as track. Making your dino run requires hitting the space bar on your keyboard – over-and-over, faster-and-faster. In older users hands like mine, that can be done pretty easily, but in a six-year-old’s hands that repetitive fast motion turns into parent-cringing pounding on the keyboard. And don’t even ask them to try to do that and hit a letter key at the same time to jump over hurdles.

The Lessons Learned

Dinokids just launched as a public beta in September, so you won’t find the traffic numbers of a Club Penguin or Webkinz when your kid is looking for someone to talk to or play with in-world. And, many areas of the world are still under construction. Also, you may encounter bugs with such a new application. My first attempts to authorize my girl’s account didn’t work, and after a nice e-mail exchange with the team in Korea who is building Dinokids, it was determined that a bug in the system didn’t like the underscore character in my e-mail address. They quickly fixed it, and I can feel good about the fact that I’ve helped make it a better process for those who come after me. But, not everyone wants to be an early adopter and deal with the issues that can sometimes bring. Overall, we both liked what we were able to see and my girl has returned several times on her own, so if you’ve got a kiddo who’s crazy about dinosaurs this world is probably a good one for them.

Laura P. Thomas is the wife of a former rocker and mother of one 6-year-old girl that’s already waaay too interested in The Jonas Brothers (the apple didn’t fall far). She works in the Global Online team at Dell, evangelizes virtual worlds, and twitters too much as LPT.

This is part of a series of posts looking at virtual worlds targeted toward kids.

Following my recent post here on the virtual world of Webkinz, there seemed to be some interest in taking a look at other virtual worlds targeted toward children. These are more often 2.5D, rather than true 3D, environments. At last year’s SXSW Interactive conference I heard one venture capitalist say they were the only virtual worlds she was investing in due to their strong growth.

And grow, they have. I’m on an airplane now heading to the Virtual Worlds Conference in L.A. which has an entire track just on kid’s worlds. With new virtual worlds popping up every day, this could become a never-ending series. I’m just going to start with those I have personal experience with and see where it takes me from there.

Handipoints Chore Charts
This is actually a review of a new world that I had not heard of until it was mentioned by someone in a comment on ThisMommyGig! The Handipoints Chore Chartssite seems to be an interesting new angle on a virtual world because it is fronted by a more “virtuous” goal of getting children to do their chores. Always a fan of hiding learning in fun, I thought this might be a great opportunity to encourage good work by using the online hook.

The Good
It certainly appealed to my daughter who seems to spend more time on the computer lately than on that other vice of television. I was embarrassed to answer during her recent kindergarten orientation that what my child liked to do at home was play Webkinz.

But, the promise of possible bathtimes without nagging or yelling appealed to me, so my girl and I sat down together to chose a variety of tasks and chores for her to keep track of to earn Handipoints. Even new things that had not previously been her responsibility (i.e. water the plants) grading system went into the list. See lessons learned below for more on that.

Allowing the child to input what they’ve done encourages more responsibility, and the grading system allows parent to come behind and not only verify that the tasks were completed, but also grade them on how well they were done. For example, when my daughter turns off her nightlight without any reminder, she gets an A.  When I have to prompt her, she gets a B.

The actual virtual world component, Handiland, has a user interface that is very similar to other such worlds, so my daughter was able to navigate it easily right away.  The number of locations you can go are fairly limited and nicely illustrated through an island map. Your child chooses a cat character that they can dress up and a room to decorate. They can interact with other Handiland cats in environments such as a playground or school.

The Bad
This interaction with the others is the part that still has me a bit nervous. Handiland’s chat is not as restricted as conversation in Webkinz. While not open for free-form chat, there are more choices in the pre-programed conversation than we’ve encountered in Webkinz. While it still prevents children from sharing such detail as their exact address, it does get into more personal information such as the state in which your child lives.

The only other not so great thing we’ve discovered is that the fun of the virtual world can overshadow the task manager - which led to another lesson learned. Sometimes pop-ups even surface while you are in the task reporting area that entice the child away from there for stamp-hunting expeditions and such.

The Lessons Learned

The first lesson I learned was to be sure to set the target high for rewards, or limit the number of tasks.  There were so many behaviors I hoped to improve that I loaded several in there. Then, my girl wanted to add some new chores to the list, which all sounded helpful, so why not?  Well, with all of those options for earning points, what I thought would take a month to do was completed in a week. Now I’ve got to go buy another Webkinz.

The other lesson we’ve learned was to drive home the importance of inputing their task updates before heading into Handiland. Time will get away from them and the next thing you know they’re not meeting their requirement to go to bed on time, which leads to fewer points (and in my household, much whining, crying and begging for a do-over)

[UPDATE 9/19/08: At the request(s) of Mary at Handipoints, I've changed the title in the links above from "Handipoints" to "Handipoints Chore Charts". Whatever the name, after cashing in on her first goal, my girl's interest in the site has dropped dramatically. We set a new, higher goal, but it's been a week since she's bothered to visit the site and input any tasks she has completed.]

Laura P. Thomas is the wife of a former rocker and mother of one 5-year-old girl that’s already waaay too interested in The Jonas Brothers. (the apple didn’t fall far) She works in the Global Online team at Dell, evangelizes virtual worlds, and twitters too much as LPT.

Kymberli Mulford is the proud mom of a grade-schooler and high-schooler in the Chicago suburbs, and the proud grandmother of her now-grown stepson’s four children. When she’s not shuttling her sons from one activity to another, she works in the world of educational technology – as a district administrator, a learning facilitator, a consultant, and as a blogger at Onionskin. For more of Kymberli’s “mom” posts click here!

I love reading.

Even more, I really love reading to my sons. Somehow, no matter how busy I was when they were too young to read on their own, I just couldn’t say no when they came around the corner with a picture book.

Lucky for me, they have both become great readers. But I still love reading to them, and I’m looking forward to having more time to do that this summer. I can’t wait to get out all of my favorites and go through them again.

Equally interesting to my budding readers, though, were the wonderful websites that provided this same service on the screen. Once Flash animation entered the world of children’s literature online, new voices emanated from the computer and patiently read to my boys (over and over if they wished), expanding their world of narrators to include male voices and dialects and accents that were much more interesting than mine.

Here are a few of my favorites, done with such quality and attention to detail that they are almost as good as sitting on a mother’s lap…

• Tumblebooks
• Storyline Online
• Story Place
• Reading is Fundamental

Another great website for pre-readers is Starfall. This can be used as soon as your little one is able to use the mouse on his or her own. There’s no reading required, and the “sparkles” show your child where to click next. Very entertaining, very cute — and a great way to sneak in some letter/sound teaching in a refreshingly fun way!

Photo Credit: Bedtime story by Vonus on Flickr