Will Richardson

Speaker, consultant, writer, learner, parent

Social Networking for Kids…Young Kids

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My good friend and neighbor Warren Buckleitner is the lead source for today’s story “Safer Cyber-Playrooms” in USA Today. The news is that both Disney and Nick are now offering social networking sites for the sub-14 set.

Parents can explore along with their kids — or create their own account— and may be doing their kids a favor. “These prepare (kids) for services like MySpace, wikis (online collaborative sites) and blogs,” Buckleitner says, “the same tools that are becoming part of the workforce and culture in general.”

Small pieces (and kids) not so loosely joined…and heavily branded.

Comments

  1. Becky says

    What a great way to introduce social networking at an age where children may still be listening to parents! Together, parents and children can explore and learn. This seems to be a great alternative to passing laws prohibiting their use in schools. They will likely exlplore on their own, anyway. It makes sense to guide their explorations before turning them loose. Of course, we all know that prohibiting something often makes it much more appealing. If we work along side them, it will take the mystique away

  2. Warren Buckleitner says

    Thanks, Will for noting this. I think these two “free” (read to the end) web services, both released within the last month, are are important to note because the mark a time when big media (Disney & Viacom) firmly cross into interactive space, and you can’t come up with better cultural watermarks than big media companies. So these services could be as significant to the interactive web space as Time’s person of the year. Some key points to note, though:
    * In the “show me the money” dept., both services heavily leverage related programming. So while there are no ads on the screens themselves (leading parents to think these free sites take the high road) you’ll probably wake up on a Disney cruise and you’ll have no idea how you got there!
    * Both services are “time sinks,” designed to pull children’s valuable interactive minutes away from traditional IMing and MMOGs into content that they control. They get kids to register by giving them screen names and encourage them to get their friends to also sign up. So there’s a bit of a low grade pyramid scheme feeling to them.
    * While children won’t see banner ads for Chips Ahoy! in the services themselves, they’ll see them en route to them, perhaps during the log in screens or when visiting a related SpongeBob page.
    * Of all the children’s MMOGs I’ve reviewed to date, I find Webkinz World (http://www.webkinz.com) to be the most commercially honest; plus there’s some impressive programming in the educational activities.

  3. Susan Funk says

    This avenue for exploration does not appeal to me. I would rather supervise my child using a blog space of his or her own in a non-comercial space. It is hard enough to keep the advertising from invading your child’s mind and heart. I am concerned about the commercialized stories that my children are innudated with. Disney and Nick are not for me.

  5. B Brown says

    How are they circumventing the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) which prevents Internet companies, services, and websites within the United States’ jurisdiction from collecting personal information from users younger than the age of thirteen?

  6. Molly says

    I am a bit worried about children under the age of 14 being involved with social sites. As a future physical education teacher, I cannot help but think that children will “get addicted” to these sites and spend all their time in front of a computer. I think it would be a good idea to teach the children about these sites in a technology class but allowing them to do it at home will cause problems. I know how addicted college age students are to MySpace and Facebook. I can only imagine how they would be if they learned about these sites at a younger age. Physical activity is critical for people of all ages but vital for children. Instead of sitting in front of a computer, children need to be playing outside. There will be plenty of time for them to learn about social networking sites when they are older.