Fledgling star reporters in kids' virtual worlds

The people who help protect kids in virtual worlds have noticed an interesting trend: More and more kids are posting news, cheats (workarounds), and pictures from their favorite online worlds and games in their own blogs. "Essentially, the kids act as reporters for the virtual world by taking screenshots of parties and events in addition to reporting on various issues," writes Chase Straight in the blog of Metaverse Mod Squad, a virtual-world moderation company. It adds that these young bloggers – who are, in effect, co-creators or -producers of these worlds – are also skilled in creating and posting videos from in-world (or "machinima"), including music videos and tutorials or how-to's for in-world activity. "Some kid bloggers have developed such a large following that emerging virtual world sites have entered into financial partnerships with them in order to reach their fanbase. Their star power and celebrity status have inspired other children to create blogs of their own, hoping to attract the same level of readership." [See also "Top 8 workarounds of kid virtual-world users" and our "Undercover Mom" series by NFN contributor Sharon Duke Estroff.]

Undercover Mom in BarbieGirls, Part 4: Peer pressure to pay up

By Sharon Duke Estroff

Among the cardinal (albeit unfortunate) rules of the schoolyard social jungle is that the more cool, expensive stuff you have, the higher you climb on the food chain. And what kid doesn’t wish to become king or queen of the jungle? Children’s virtual worlds like Barbie Girls understand this fundamental truth about their target audience, so they lay the groundwork for a social caste system by offering privileged paid memberships (i.e. Barbie Girl’s VIP Club) - and let peer pressure take care of the rest.

While I was allowed as a non-paying member to select a single stylish outfit on sign up, purchasing additional attire requires a premium membership. With only the clothes on my back, I couldn’t swap out my wardrobe on the quarter hour like my VIP peers. I couldn’t catwalk the contents of my closet through town - or accessorize with funky jewelry and purses. Instead, I was forced to wear the same lame sundress 24x7, a Barbie Girl social faux pas of the highest order.

I faced similar stresses over my Barbie Girls room, a loft-looking studio apartment with a double bed. Not that my room wasn't nice. The floors were hardwood and my comforter was swanky. But my VIP pals' pads were lavishly furnished from wall to wall and decked out with Jacuzzis, entertainment centers, and indoor hammocks strung between breezy palm trees. I cringed at the prospect of hosting a party in my spare, humble abode. But, alas, it was a non-issue, since subprime citizens such as myself cannot invite guests to their rooms.

Truth be told, the materialistic messaging and pressures I encountered on BarbieGirls weren’t really any different than those that kids face daily in our consumeristic contemporary culture. Yet in this particular virtual-world setting - a societal microcosm populated by mallrats and would-be super models - the overall effect was admittedly more intense.

But here's the sparkly silver lining: BarbieGirls.com provides modern parents with an ideal (albeit unlikely) teaching tool. So sit down with your tween and explore the Web site together. Use the magical hyperbole of Barbie's online world as a launching pad for essential parent-child conversations about marketing and materialism; possessions and popularity; friends and peer pressure; happiness, gratitude, and balance. Help her understand that while glitz, glamor, and fabulous clothes can be cool and lots of fun, our personal worth and value ultimately come from the inside out - and not the other way around.

Related links

Screenshots that show what Sharon means, for example, the difference between BarbieGirls Basic and BarbieGirls VIP at a glance

"Paying for Points" broadens out this picture. It's an analysis of payment and reward systems (and the social hierarchies they create) in virtual worlds, starting with WeeWorld - by analyst and blogger Tim Howgego in the UK .

For an index of the complete Undercover Mom series to date, please click here.

Undercover Mom in BarbieGirls.com, Part 3: To pay or not to pay?

By Sharon Duke Estroff

The vast majority of children’s virtual worlds (and certainly the materialistic pinkpalooza at BarbieGirls.com) are commercial – not public-interest ¬endeavors. So while these Web sites may have excellent intentions in creating safe, kid-friendly online playspaces, they are, at the end of the day, in it for the money, of course.

Some virtual worlds (like Nickelodeon’s Nicktropolis and Pearson Education’s Poptropica) generate profit through paid advertisements. Kids are allowed to play for free, but their fun is laced with overt and covert commercial messaging (i.e. Apple Jacks banners surrounding the screen and playing hockey using M&M candies as pucks, respectively).

Other virtual worlds, like BarbieGirls, employ a pay-to-play model, meaning that cash flow comes not from outside advertisers but from paid memberships. While anybody can open a free BarbieGirls account with limited play capabilities, only those acquiring paid VIP memberships are allowed (to quote directly from the site) “special access to all the hottest stuff!”

Crown jewels: Some sites I’ve visited as Undercover Mom reserve the privilege of clothing one's avatar and furnishing his or her online abode for paid members only. Not so in Barbie Girls, where I was allowed to select a stylish, size 0 outfit ¬– and flooring, wallpaper, and a bed for my loft – from the get-go. Yes, I might have signed up for a free account, but I could strut my virtual stuff about town without feeling like I was donning a scarlet “Non-Member” tiara. For kids who cannot afford to pay (or whose parents refuse to pay) for VIP membership but still want to be included in the fun, this is a significant perk, in my book.

Skeletons in the closet: Although my lack of VIP citizenship may not have been glaringly evident to the masses, it certainly was to me; BarbieGirls dishes out constant reminders to non-members of their subprime status. Sure, I could window shop to my heart’s content – even try on glamorous outfits and accessories – but there was a sales attendant on hand at every store reminding me that I couldn’t buy a darn thing unless I coughed up $5.99 a month. In Paw Pawpalooza, a popular region of BarbieGirls.com, I was denied access to both the Tail-Shakin' Treehouse and the Jungle River Boogie ride. The only place I was welcomed was the Posh Pets shop, where I wasn’t allowed to adopt a pet. A similar caste system ensued in Extreme Dream Park where I could not enter the Sparkle Coaster Place, “a magical land filled with treasures and surprises." I was, however, allowed to enter the Purple Parlor where I could get my fortune told. Once a day. Honestly, If I were a tween girl on BarbieGirls, it wouldn’t have taken me 10 minutes to start badgering my parents to let me become a VIP. [Big pressure to be a VIP doesn't only come from Barbie Girls corporate; get the full scoop in my next installment.]

The bottom line: This week’s Undercover Mom adventure drives home an important reality (for both parent and child) that there is no such thing as a free lunch in kids’ virtual worlds. I asked consumer guru Clark Howard, author of Clark Smart Parents, Clark Smart Kids, if he had any suggestions as to how parents might best handle the pay-to-play dilemma presented by BarbieGirls VIP memberships. He suggested: “Sit down with your child and explain that this Web site wants her to pay money to be there, and that if she would like to use her money – or work it off by doing chores around the house – she can; but she needs to understand that, in choosing the membership they will be giving up X,Y, and Z.” It’s Howard’s hope that Congress will eventually pass a law disallowing such direct marketing to children under 14 years of age.

Related links

Screenshots illustrating Undercover Mom's points about BarbieGirls this week

Paperdolls to avatars: "Girls used to grow up with their dolls; now they are growing up with their avatars," The Guardian reports in an update on virtual worlds in general. It compares kids' and newer grownup virtual worlds with Second Life and explains why VWs, unlike social network sites, actually make money (see also "Virtual economies & kids").

Wired's GeekDad on the virtual world Pixie Hollow: "The game allows users to create a Tinker Bell-like character and then use this fairy to explore the land of Pixie Hollow, buy items at stores, make friends with other pixies, buy items at stores, play games and buy items at stores. While my son has really enjoyed playing another of Disney’s MMOGs, Pirates of the Caribbean Online, playing Pixie Hollow with my daughters has left us feeling a little empty."

For an index of the complete Undercover Mom series to date, please click here.

More on virtual world growth

Heard of Spineworld? I hadn't. But a 10-year-old I know told me he's seeing it everywhere in his circles. Now we know from UK-based market researcher K Zero that its population (registered users) has more than doubled since first quarter '09, from 1 million then to 2.8 million now, according to VirtualWorldsNews. Overall, "the total number of registered accounts in the virtual worlds sector totaled 579,000,000 in the April-June quarter, 2009. That's an increase of 38.6% from the prior quarter when the tally was 417,000,000." K Zero adds that 60% of all virtual world users are between the ages of 10 and 15, "followed closely" by 5-to-10-year-olds, reports in its 2nd-quarter '09 update The problem is, its eye-grabbing chart is pretty imprecise, making it appear that more than 75% of the total VW population are 10-15 years old and that 5-to-9-year-olds represent about a quarter, with nothing left over at all for users 16+. As for individual kid worlds, besides Spineworld's, some of the biggest gains were seen by Stardoll, which added 8 million users; Club Penguin (6 million); Nicktropolis (3.1 million); and UK-based Moshi Monsters (3 million). The reports says Poptropica gained 36 million users, but that must be a typo, right? [See also "Undercover Mom in Poptropica" and in Stardoll, and our complete Undercover Mom series.]

Undercover Mom in BarbieGirls.com, Part 2: Talking numbers

By Sharon Duke Estroff

This week’s post continues detailing my investigation of Barbie Girls, and the crown jewels and skeletons in the closet that I uncovered there.

Crown jewel: Number-blocking filters
Part of the appeal of children's virtual worlds like BarbieGirls.com exists in their conversational filters, one of the most notable functions of which is weeding out mention of any specific numbers in both written and numeric form (i.e. “7” or “seven”). The driving wisdom, here, is that without numbers, kids cannot reveal personal information such as age, address, and phone number - which could put them at risk of being targeted by an online predator. From a parental perspective, I found this feature both comforting and welcome. Not only does it place a significant barrier between Internet ne’er-do-wells and our children, it also helps to teach kids the difference between safe and unsafe online chat.

Skeleton in the Closet: Kids' own workarounds
But just how effective are these filters? Strictly speaking they get the job done. Every time I tried typing a number in Barbie Girls, a series of nonsensical symbols (i.e. #*#*) would appear in its place. But digital natives can be very clever and creative when it comes to working around Web site safety features. In one virtual world I visited, I witnessed kids asking one another “How many dots are you?” then tapping out the appropriate response with a sequence of periods. On Barbie Girls, a common tactic is using homonyms and rhyming words in place of numbers. I managed to snap a couple of screenshots demonstrating this technique in action during an open party in another Barbie Girls swanky studio apartment. In the first screenshot, PRINCESSCAALAZ is saying “Get it?” “The Number” “Won and Too” (meaning "12"). “Yes,” replies the avatar sitting next to her. Then, in the second screenshot, PRINCESSCAALAZ is stating that she is “the number before,” or 11. At this point, SALOOMY, the girl with the brown legwarmers, announces that she is “mine,” otherwise known as "nine."

Bottom Line: Indeed, BarbieGirls.com’s conversational filters make it exceedingly difficult for kids to spill their essential 411 on the website. Parents should be aware, however, that it is not impossible for children to reveal their essential FOR WON WON on this or any other Web site. As in the real world, children’s virtual-world activity requires ongoing parental supervision and involvement.

More Barbie Girls to come next week! For an index of the complete Undercover Mom series to date, please click here.

Undercover Mom in BarbieGirls.com, Part 1: Romance in the air

By Sharon Duke Estroff

As with every children’s virtual world I’ve visited undercover, I found BarbieGirls.com to have both its crown jewels and its skeletons in the closet.

Crown jewel: Socially acceptable doll play for tweens
When I was growing up, girls played with Barbies well past their 12th birthdays. Today, in contrast, publicly admitting to owning a Barbie Dream House at the age of 12 would equate to middle school social suicide. Not so, however, for her virtual counterpart. BarbieGirls.com is one of the most popular websites in the burgeoning children’s virtual world market. K-Zero virtual world consultancy places it at 15 million unique accounts and skip counting. The vast majority of those accounts belonging to tween girls. This is welcome news considering the widespread concern among child development experts that the KGOY phenomenon (Kids Getting Older Younger) may be cheating millennial kids out of their one and only go round at childhood. BarbieGirls.com has allowed a generation of cool-conscious tweens to stay on the pink bandwagon for just a little longer.

Skeleton in the closet: Questionable conversation
But just because the BarbieGirl.com’s is the classic high-ponytailed pink silhouette doesn’t mean that the play is the same as in yesteryear. The chat and virtual interaction factors have added a completely different dimension to this Barbie world. Because pictures speak a thousand words – and I am frankly speechless after some of the conversations I witnessed – I am going to use screenshots to out this skeleton.

Surprising Barbie Girl Scene #1: I took this screenshot in the Extreme Dreamland palace, where ambience is kitschy Arabian Nights with matching background music. I’d just plopped myself down by the crystal ball when the avatar sitting next to me announced “I am a guys” (the filter disallows “guy” in the singular). Hmm, she/he sure doesn’t look like a guy….

Surprising Barbie Girl Scene #2: Once we’d established that he was of the male species and I of the female, our conversation progressed to the next level. Here is my new guy friend asking me if I’d like to make out. Note that his proposal is presented in separate bubbles to bypass filters that block certain strands of words.

Coming next week: more crown jewels and skeletons oat BarbieGirls.com. For an index of the complete Undercover Mom series to date, please click here.

Undercover Mom in Poptropica, Part 2: The Apple Jacks of kids' virtual worlds

By Sharon Duke Estroff

Last week I detailed the good things I discovered in this popular kids' virtual world for 5-to-10-year-olds. This week...

What I wasn't crazy about

Video Game Overtones. Gallant educational effort aside, my suspicions were correct. Kids aren’t flocking to Poptropica.com by the tens of millions out of a quest for learning, they’re flocking there for the highly addictive video games. No sooner had I entered an Aztec ruin on Shark Island than I found myself hopping, flipping, and climbing Nintendo-style to a secret passage (a task that took me a good 30 minutes to nail down as I kept missing my landing targets and being tossed back to Go). Indeed, everywhere I turned on Poptropica held similar gaming challenges. It’s safe to say that for every second a kid spends reading educational tidbits on Poptropica, he spends hundreds more in videogame la-la land.

To Cheat or Not to Cheat. Let there be no mistake about it. Poptropica games are HARD. For a prehistoric parent like me, they border on downright impossible. At a loss for how I’d ever manage to sedate that Great White and save Shark Island, I turned to two of my joystick-savvy sons (ages 9 and 14) for assistance. But alas, they too failed miserably. That’s when I began combing the kiddie masses (at school, birthday parties, Chuck E. Cheese and the like) for advice on how to succeed in Poptropica. The consensus was clear and simple: I needed to Google "Poptropica Cheats." My search yielded no less than 36,000 results including this unsettling video on YouTube of two children explaining how to cheat on the site - a great opportunity, I'd say, for family discussion about "cheating" in game and virtual worlds vs. in the real world: Ask your kids the similarities and differences are.

Advertising All Around. I’m not naïve. I understand that for a free virtual world like Poptropica to be profitable it needs to feature paid advertisements. The Apple Jacks banners flanking the site didn’t bother me a bit. Nor did the Cinnamon Toast Crunch game that has kids collecting pieces of cereal. But is it really necessary to launch a full-screen pop-up ad every time a kid (or a mom) moves the mouse a millimeter too far to the right or left? Worse yet, the pop-up ads prevented me from returning to the Poptropica page where I’d been previously playing, forcing me to start the game all over again with a brand new avatar – five times. (Hmm, might such repeat registration have something to do with those reported 20 million Poptropica accounts? Hey, I’m just saying.)

The Bottom Line

Ultimately, I found Poptropica to be a lot like the Apple Jacks cereal it plugs so aggressively - loops of empty calories dusted with vitamins and minerals. Nevertheless, in a virtual-world cafeteria line full of straight-out junk food, it makes for a pretty good choice.

Screenshots

Apple Jacks everywhere

Immersive advertising: Embedded Cinnamon Toast Crunch

Many, many Poptropica cheats

For an index of the complete Undercover Mom series to date, please click here.

Undercover Mom in Poptropica, Part 1: Virtual World with educational elements

By Sharon Duke Estroff

I chose Poptropica.com as the site of my latest undercover mom investigation because of its first-place ranking in the 5-to-10-year-old bracket. With 20 million unique accounts and counting, it is indeed a heavy hitter in the burgeoning children’s virtual world market.

But I was also intrigued by the Poptropica's educational spin. The site's parent company is Family Education Network (FEN), developers of one of my favorite teaching resources, Funbrain.com. As worthy a site as Funbrain may be, however, it’s not the kind a kid would visit voluntarily without the urging of a parent, educator, or academic tutor. Could a children’s Web site as hopping as Poptropica possibly be on the same educational plain as Funbrain? I was determined to find out what kind of fare this populous virtual world was really serving up.

What I Liked About Poptropica

Underlying Storylines. In contrast to some children's virtual worlds that are essentially animated chatrooms, Poptropica consists of a collection of uniquely themed islands with equally unique underlying storylines. Shark Tooth Island, for example, has a distinctly reggae-like feel and is being tormented by a vicious shark. Time Tangled Island is set 50 years in the future (complete with a wrinkled, decrepit version of your avatar) and revolves around a malfunctioning time machine that has distorted history.

Overlying Purpose. Whatever the island's particular problem may be, it's up to you, the kid, to find the solution. Such active quests engage children from the get-go while minimizing boredom-induced troublemaking behaviors such as cyberbullying. I was also pleased to find a virtual world where kids' ultimate purpose was something besides getting and spending money.

Helpful, Directive Avatars. Logging onto a virtual world for the first time can be a confounding and oddly isolating experience. Poptropica takes good care of its "newbies" by sending out resident avatars to greet kids and give them the skinny on the particular mission at hand. These avatars also provide players with clues and props to assist in their mystery-busting endeavors.

Drop-Down Q&As. Unlike many virtual worlds that offer the option of free (albeit monitored) chat, Poptropica conversation is limited to a series of pre-selected drop-down questions and answers. While such constraints might feel like a straitjacket in more schmoozing-focused virtual worlds, it works nicely in Poptropica. Kids’ interactions remain positive and upbeat while the pre-set choices teach children how to engage in socially appropriate conversation in virtual worlds at large.

Educational Undertones. I was happy to discover that Poptropica does indeed boast an admirable educational dimension. Kids travel back in time and meet historical figures like Leonardo daVinci and Thomas Edison. They traipse through Aztec Ruins and learn about the dorsal fins of Great White sharks. Children who want to learn more about a particular subject can click a button that links them directly to more info at FEN's FactMonster.com.

Next week: What I'm not so crazy about in Poptropica.

Screenshots

Online chat, Poptropica-style

Me 'n' Leonardo Davinci

Solving mysteries for the betterment of mankind (kinda)

For an index of the complete Undercover Mom series to date, please click here.

Undercover Mom in Stardoll, Part 3: A+ for creativity

By Sharon Duke Estroff

As I’ve devoted my last two posts to illuminating the darker sides of Stardoll, I’m going to dedicate today’s entry to spotlighting what I consider to be the site’s crowning glory: its design center.

A few weeks back, while investigating Club Penguin, I described my experience in the pizza parlor, where dozens of kids/penguins pretending to be waiters and waitresses took my order for food that was never delivered. At first, I’d found the scene to be a charming example of virtual pretend play but, the more time I spent in there, the less charming it seemed to be.

When I was a kid, playing “restaurant” meant creating something out of nothing – taking a cardboard box and turning it into an elegantly set table; turning inanimate dolls and stuffed animals into lively customers; creating our own recipes out of random ingredients we’d swiped from the kitchen. I didn't see anything of the sort taking place on Club Penguin. Graphic designers - not kids' imaginations - built the pizzeria, where the extent of children's imaginary play was asking a roomful of already animated penguins what they wanted to eat – and leaving them virtually to starve at the table.

In the Stardoll design center, the scene is quite different. Children can create their own fabrics, choosing from dozens of colors and decorative shapes and adjusting for the size and repetition of the print. They can then use that custom fabric to sew tablecloths, curtains, and rugs, even uniforms for their restaurant staff.

In the scenery design area, kids can create backdrops - themes span from a Parisian café to a creepy castle dungeon - and jazz up the interior with kitschy furniture and accessories (some of these perks require a paid Super Star membership). As in most virtual worlds, including Club Penguin, Stardoll players can also decorate their home spaces with items they’ve “purchased” using the site’s currency.

Another clever Stardoll creative activity is the “Print Your Tee” concept. Kids can select from a dozen or so shirt styles in a rainbow of colors, and personalize them with decorative designs and self-created slogans. With the help of a credit card, the tee can be catapulted across the digital divide and arrive at the real world front door several days later. Yes, it's a ruthless money-making ploy, but a brilliant one, don't you think? Besides, what aspiring designer wouldn’t thrill to the chance to strut her own designs on the school playground? [I am slightly unsettled by the “maternity” shirt style choice, as Stardoll says most of its clientele are girls 7-17.]

Another feather in Stardoll's hat is the personal album feature, which allows kids to compile a portfolio of their design work. In addition to displaying images of their work (some of which require a Super Star membership to save and post), the album also offers creative-writing opps, enabling children to add captions and storylines to their designs.

So if I were to sum up my stint in Stardoll, I’d have to call it a blend of parenting pros and cons - a fast-moving, materialistic, slightly-slutty, anorexic-ish virtual world, where imagination abounds and the potential for creative expression in children is far greater than anything I’ve seen in my undercover travels.

Screenshots

Design your Stardoll's environment too

Design your own fabric (for apparel or décor)

Sewing is part of clothing design

Virtual but (to users) very real Design Center

Design as well as writing opportunities, with the possibility of instant feedback from fellow designers

Stardoll users can also model their clothing designs in real life

For an index of the complete Undercover Mom series to date, please click here.

Undercover Mom in Stardoll, Part 2: The skinny on virtual paperdolls

By Sharon Duke Estroff

In case there’s any doubt over which is more fun - trying on real clothes at Bloomingdales or trying on virtual clothes at a Stardoll department store - there shouldn’t be. The latter is the hands-down winner.

Having survived recent bathing suit shopping trauma, I found dressing up MattieLu, my Stardoll avatar, to be a little slice of shopping heaven. Every frock I slipped onto my virtual self accented my many assets. As far as minimizing my bodily flaws, completely unnecessary, as I apparently haven’t any.

When I created MattieLu during my personal Stardoll design process, I was given the option of shaping her frame by choosing body size 1, 2, or 3 - one extreme presumably super skinny and the other more curvaceous. Upper and lower bodies are modified separately so I could theoretically create an apple (heavier on top) or pear (heavier below) framed avatar.

I was fleetingly impressed. Stardoll’s overriding shopping theme may be shamelessly materialistic, its retail offerings, more than slightly slutty, but at least this youth website is cognizant of the importance of building healthy body image in kids. At least it’s doing its part to counteract the counterproductive message (sent children’s way by skeletal tween idols and such) that fame, fortune, and happiness are inversely correlated with body fat index.

Nevertheless first impressions can be short lived. Upon alternating my avatars body type number, I recognized virtually no change whatsoever in her frame. Perhaps that option isn’t right now working, I reasoned.

After much closer inspection, however, I did notice a very slight puffing and unpuffing of MattieLu’s frame with my ascension and descension of number choice. (ee screenshots). Still, if this was the extent of body-type variation advocated by Stardoll, I might as well hibernate for the entirety of bathing suit season.

Does Stardoll’s perfectly proportioned avatars indeed foster unhealthy body image in the young girls who create them? Does its scant, midriff-baring couture encourage excessive dieting?

I think the Stardoll club message boards speak for themselves. (Stardoll members who cyberswear they’re at least 13 years old are allowed to join clubs; each club has its own message board where members post questions, suggestions, and free associative ramblings.) A disproportionate number of posts revolve around topics of physical appearance, weight loss and eating disorders. I came across several dozen clubs that are exclusively devoted to such subjects (see screenshot), but I also came upon weight issue posting in presumably unrelated forums like the “Animal Lovers” club.

Finally, there are sure to be those who argue that Stardoll’s pro-emaciation message is really no different than that of Barbie who’s plagued generations of girls with an impossibly perfect vision of female physical beauty. But as a former Barbie junkie and current concerned mom/undercover Stardoll member, I am going to have to differ on that one. Where there was never any question that Barbie was an inanimate plastic plaything, Stardoll essentially eradicates the line between fantasy and reality, immersing kids in its appearance-obsessed virtual world. As an adult, I intellectually grasped that the Stardoll experience is a product of state of the art computer graphics and technology. Still, I found it difficult to remain impervious to its overriding superficial mindset. On the upside, sampling life as a size 0 did inspire me to dust off my treadmill and lay off the Girl Scout cookies for a while.

MattieLu as a No. 1 body type

But No. 2 isn't that different

MattieLu settles on No. 3

Kelly Osbourne, Stardoll-style

Signs of anorexia

Scary advice on a Stardoll message board

For an index of the complete Undercover Mom series to date, please click here.

Undercover Mom in Stardoll, Part 1: Barbie grows up

By Sharon Duke Estroff

Despite my kids’ insistence that I never tell a soul, I’m spilling the truth anyway - I played with Barbies until at least my 13th birthday. And most of my friends did too. We’d spend entire Saturday nights primping our dolls for hot dates with Ken, and showcasing our collections of tiny plastic shoes as if they were precious gems. Now, nearly three decades later, I’m still a girly girl at heart. So it seemed only natural to tap Stardoll.com - a wildly popular “virtual paperdoll community” with nearly 30 million members - as the site of my next Undercover Mom investigation.

Stardoll.com Day 1

It's not that I expected a full-fledged reunion with my old plastic pal. I knew that Stardoll would be its own girl. But I was admittedly stunned by the very grown-up feel of this fashionable virtual world. While I’d pictured Stardolls to be some kind of Barbie/Bratz/Sailor Moon cyberfusion, they were in a different league, altogether.

Unlike the wide-eyed whimsical avatars of many children’s websites, Stardoll avatars seem plucked from the pages of Vogue magazine - sophisticated and edgy; sexy and cool. There are male Stardolls too: some grungy and goateed, others bearing resemblance to Adam Lambert, the metrosexual American Idol contestant - all sporting six-packs and come-hither looks. Sure, Barbie has been criticized for her impossibly perfect proportions and Bratz for their defiant, rebellious streak, but they still manage to maintain a playful childlike quality that is decidedly missing from Stardoll.com.

Puzzled, I began to question my assumption that Stardoll is a Web site for children. Maybe it’s really designed for middle-aged moms wishing to be 20-somethings with too much time on their hands. But then I noticed the SpongeBob SquarePants and Littlest Pet Shop ads flanking the Stardoll homepage and the “about us” page stating that most Stardoll members are girls 7-17, and I second-guessed no more.

Mom Break: In the marketing world it's known as the KGOY (Kids Getting Older Younger). You’ll find it on the racks of stores like Justice (formerly Limited Too) that sell padded bras for 6-year-olds, at the local cinema where 8-year-olds pile in to see Twilight, and in Barbie’s transformation from middle-school staple to toddler toy.
And you’ll find evidence of KGOY in every nook and cranny of Stardoll.com – from the distinctly adult-looking avatars to the mature designer clothes to the sophisticated loft living spaces.

But the silver lining is that Stardoll has made playing with dolls beyond kindergarten once again socially acceptable for 21st-century kids. The same girls who swapped their dolls for cellphones to be cool (but secretly would have traded their last wireless minute for a chance to put on a bona fide Barbie fashion show) can now save face while dressing the Avril Lavigne Stardoll for an imaginary concert or designing a punk-rock prom dress for their grungy avatar. Yes, glaringly imperfect as it might be, Stardoll has in its own way returned a few embers of Girlhood Past to the KGOY generation.

Screenshots

Oh so sophisticated avatars

Decidedly grown-up 7-year-old

"Ken," Stardoll-style

To go "goth"

Very fashionable physicist

Jonas Brothers as Stardolls

For an index of the complete Undercover Mom series to date, please click here.

Undercover Mom in ClubPenguin, Part 6: Old-fashioned pretend play in a new-fangled world

by Sharon Duke Estroff

During my time on Club Penguin, I became a regular at the local pizzeria. I liked it because of the cliché Italian piano music, the cozy candle-lit tables, and the fiery brick oven; but mostly because of the friendly waiters and waitresses who never, ever delivered my pizza.

Sure, I was initially stumped over how I could have given my order to 16 separate penguins and not have as much as a slice to show for it, but then I realized that these avatars/kids were only pretending to be waiters and waitresses. And they thought I was pretending to be a customer. We were playing the old "let's pretend" game in a new sort of setting.

Mom Break: Charming? Yes. Strictly worry-free? No. After all, it may walk like a penguin and talk like a penguin, but that doesn’t mean it's a penguin. Unlike traditional imaginative play, kids didn’t dream up this bustling restaurant scene on Club Penguin; graphic designers did it for them. The storylines were fueled not by children’s imaginations but by the robotic clicks of a computer mouse.

I’ve learned during my years of studying child psychology that childhood is a learning process by design, and old-fashioned pretend play is an essential, integral part of the curriculum. Dress-up games and tea parties aren’t just remnants of the retro-childhood, they're the building blocks of imagination and the means by which children weave together all the elements of life as they experience it. As traditional low-tech playtime progressively gives way to high-tech virtual playtime, the concern over its impact on millennial children is real and far-reaching. It's up to us millennial parents to maintain a consistent balance for our kids between real and virtual fun.

That said, I want to end this one on a positive note: Unlike the cyberbullying and romancing I describe in earlier Undercover Mom installments, I ultimately found the pretend play in the pizzeria to be more refreshing than concerning. You see, while those cyber-waiters and -waitresses might not have delivered my pizza, they served up something far more delicious to me: precious glimmers of hope that in every age and every generation, in this world and the virtual one, childhood will prevail.

Note from editor Anne Collier: Here are views from another respected source, Izzy Neis, a long-time moderator of kids' virtual worlds and online communities....

How children use (and implement) their imaginations in ClubPenguin

How young CP users' own seemingly impossible idea - actually tipping the iceberg - compares to Izzy's amazing experience of children's imaginative play and storyline creation on the beach

A conclusion Izzy posted last spring: "Basically, kids want to be included in the magic, they want to build empires from scratch, they want to emotionally invest themselves in seemingly-silliness, etc. It’s fun. It’s a release. It’s escapism – all the while feeling included and excited. I see this play pattern/behavior all the time on Club Penguin. From 'snowball' wars ... to parties in the igloo (much more fun in theory and planning and rounding up than the actual dancing part). Club Penguin provides tools… triggers… that allow the users to 'go to town' - making up their own rules & play. Club Penguin tries to support by facilitating pieces of storyline - just enough of a taste that the users will run away with the end."

Here's an index to all issues of Undercover Mom to date.

Undercover Mom in ClubPenguin, Part 5: Cold shoulders

By Sharon Duke Estroff

I’m not even a week into my undercover expedition and I’m already racking up penguin pals like Pokemon cards. No wonder Club Penguin's signature tagline is "Waddle around and make new friends"! That said, not all the birds I’ve met in this hopping virtual world are amicable types. Here’s what happened when I (ChillyLily) approached a group of cheery looking penguins dancing outside the lighthouse:

Me: Hi I am ChillyLily and I am KEWL

Dancing Penguin 1: R not

Me: Hannah Montana Rules

Dancing Penguin 2: Weirdo

Dancing Penguin 3: We r going to a members only party

Me: Can I come?

Dancing Penguin 1: Ewww no!

Me: PLZ

Dancing Penguin 2: (angry face emoticon)

Me: (sad face emoticon)

Dancing Penguin 3: Go away or I M reporting U

Report me? As in clicking the monitor badge icon on my player card to tell the CP powers that be that I am behaving inappropriately (which wasn’t true at all)? Couldn’t Dancing Penguin 3 just click on the ghost icon and ignore me for a while (meaning none of the messages I send will show up in bubbles on her screen until she decides to reinstate me to her inner circle)? If I get reported, the monitors could silence me. Or worse yet, they could ban me from Club Penguin altogether! And then what good would I be as an undercover penguin? In the name of damage control, I took the hint and slunk away.

Mom Break: Like so many aspects of children’s virtual worlds, I found Club Penguin’s buzzing social scene to be a mixed bag of fun, fascination, and concern.

I’ll start in the Pro column. When we were growing up, kids ran around the neighborhood with their friends until stars filled the sky. But today not so much. (Why? Because oodles of extracurriculars, mounds of homework, a generally anxiety-ridden parental population, and the advent of the formal playdate have rendered such informal socialization among children ancient practice, but that’s a whole different parenting post.) Consequently, many contemporary kids experience unprecedented feelings of isolation, loneliness, and stress. Virtual social networking, when done safely and in moderation, can provide children with a comforting sense of companionship and community – and not just in the digital realm. Many kids I chatted with in my real world focus sessions reported meeting up with their school friends on Club Penguin at night and on weekends. Social networking at a young age (in secure and kid-oriented environments) helps build critical digital literacy in children while giving parents an opportunity to teach their kids appropriate online behavior and safety rules early in the game.

And now for the Cons. Despite the fact that Club Penguin, like many other sites, works overtime to keep the chat civil, believe me, social cruelty is rampant. A virtual playground is, after all, still a playground with all the classic bullying and power plays. But unlike a real-world playground, there are no parents or teachers around to set the mean kids straight. And, in my mind at least, the website monitors don’t count. (Would you trust a babysitter to watch your kids if she was also responsible for watching millions of other kids at the same time? I think not.) In my first five days on Club Penguin, I was called "weirdo" three times, "nerd" four, and hit with numerous mean face emoticons. I was excluded from eight private igloo parties, told to go away six times, and pummeled with more snowballs than I can count. And as for my encounter with those snobby dancing penguins, well, it felt like junior high all over again. Sure the CP filters prevented them from saying anything blatantly inappropriate, but the penguins' cattiness and cruelty come through like a bullhorn.

I managed to snag some screenshots of (what I consider to be) cyberbullying on Club Penguin. As you look at them, try to imagine how you would feel as a little kid sitting alone in front of a computer screen reading such messages.

Note from editor Anne Collier: For more kinds of cyberbullying in kids' virtual worlds, see "Top 8 workarounds of kid virtual-world users" that I wrote, based on an interview with Sharon last summer. For an index of the complete Undercover Mom series to date, please click here.

Undercover Mom in ClubPenguin, Part 4: The 'dating' game

by Sharon Duke Estroff

I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that at any given moment in any given corner of any given chatroom on ClubPenguin.com, there is someone saying something to the effect of “boys say i” or “beautiful girls come over here” or “are you single?” or “will u be with me?” - which is exactly what Cowboy217 asked me one moonlit night in his igloo.

We’d met earlier that evening at the pizza parlor when I’d heeded Cowboy’s open call for available girls. By the time we got to Cowboy’s crib (which, I might add, was the Taj Mahal of igloos), we’d already swapped at least a dozen heart emoticons. We played a few rounds of “Spin the Lava”, a popular CP party game involving a lava lamp, some truth or dare, and tons of Eskimo kissing, (I’m not kidding with screenshots to prove it) before he popped the question, and I (trying not to think about how appalled Cowboy217 would be if he knew he’d just asked a married, mother of four to go steady) accepted.

Mom Break: I want to start out by recognizing that Club Penguin has excellent safety measures in place to prevent predators from tracking down children via their website. But keeping our kids safe online doesn't simply mean keeping them away from cyber-predators. It means ensuring their social, emotional, intellectual, moral, and physical well-being in both the real and virtual realms. Which is why, of all my undercover mom surprises to date, I found Club Penguin’s sexual undercurrent by far the most unsettling. It's not that every penguin I encountered on CP was engaged in some kind of flirting or dating behavior, but many were. Many, many, many were. It all makes sense if you think about it. The anonymity and lack of adult supervision in children’s virtual social worlds like Club Penguin make them natural spaces for curious kids to act out sexual themes they see in the media, even before they're ready in real life. There's no doubt that pretend romantic play is part of the course and magic of childhood, but Club Penguin is not a kindergarten dress up corner. It is a vastly populous virtual playground where digital natives of all ages and maturity levels share the same turf...and grow up faster together. (I continue to grapple with scope, implications, and complexity of this issue and welcome your insight on the screenshots that follow.)

"Come here all beautiful girls"

"Where the boyz are"

"Spin the lava at my iggy"

"Me playing spin the lava"

"Looking for the ladies"

"Are u takin?"

"One of many prom invites I received"

At the nightclub: "Who is single?" (we're talking 9-to-12-year-olds!)

Invitation to a "Boys Meet Girls Party" at someone's igloo

Dating drama at the pizza parlor - Sharon explained, "The pizza parlor is one of the most popular destinations in ClubPenguin - there's one in every chatroom, so technically there are hundreds, and there always seems to be lots of dating-related talk in them."

Note from editor Anne Collier: One thing I hope this installment illustrates is why we as a society - as we address child online safety together - can't afford to be focused on fear- instead of research-based messaging about predation online. Predatory behavior, power abuse, and bullying occur at all ages (but so does developmentally appropriate sexual exploration). We also can't afford to focus only on the negative behaviors and experiences in virtual worlds because - though clearly they are not the new Saturday-morning cartoons - there are so many good things occurring in them, including informal learning (see "Serious informal learning: Key online youth study). Sharon's reporting is important - I have seen nothing like it as I survey youth-tech and online-safety news each day. But my other hope is that readers who find this report disturbing will consider the context Sharon's expertise in child development gives it and help channel concerns into a renewed societal effort to teach ethics and citizenship - offline as well as online. Because civil, mindful behavior is protective (see "Social media literacy: The new Internet safety").

For an index of the Undercover Mom series, click here. Next week: Cyberbullying penguins?

Undercover Mom in ClubPenguin, Part 3: Anybody here speak English?!

By Sharon Duke Estroff

I’m beginning to understand why kids are so obsessed with Club Penguin. It’s a posh ski vacation via DSL connection. There’s snow tubing, ski lifts, and an ice hockey rink; a coffee shop, pizza joint, and discothèque; even a beach complete with surfboards, sun umbrellas and an outdoor fire pit (photo links below). And they’re all packed like sardines with friend-seeking penguins (upwards of 20 million of them, estimates UK-based virtual-worlds research firm K Zero). I feel so hip, so happening, so popular!

Next day: Not feeling quite so hip and popular today. Mainly because all my would-be penguin pals seem to be speaking a foreign language. Sure I recognize a few words, like “hi” and “igloo.” I’m even holding my own at deciphering the horrific misspellings (sorry, it’s the teacher in me). But ROTFL? NVM? What is this, penguinese?

Following some snooping around the Internet for an English-Penguinese translation guide, I’ve surmised that the mysterious lexicon is actually a series of cryptic acronyms and shorthand that kids use to communicate online. More Pig Latin than Greek, you might say. "ROTFL" is “rolling on the floor laughing” and "NVM" is “never mind.” Kids also use “emoticons” (e.g., the smiley face) to communicate their moods of the moment.

Mom Break: From a parental supervision standpoint, this is not good news. Not only are our kids hanging out in a parallel universe, they’re speaking in alien tongues while they’re at it. This generational fluency gap is bound to result in millions of parents not understanding what their kids and their friends are discussing. Worse yet, not every cyber-acronym is innocuous (i.e. "PRW," or "Parents Are Watching"). Granted, the Disney Company - which acquired Club Penguin in 2007 in a 700 million dollar deal - has filters in place to prevent shady shorthand from infiltrating the conversational landscape. But the reality remains that staying a cyberstep ahead of the Net generation can be tough - even for Mickey Mouse. I found one clever penguin inserting an extra letter in order to use language that's not allowed in Club Penguin: He asked someone, "Are you gay?"

Next week: "Cold Shoulders." Here are my intro to Undercover Mom and Part 1 and Part 2 of Sharon's series.

Undercover Mom's screenshots [Anne here: Sorry I can't embed them in this blog at the moment!]

ChillyLily437 on the Beach

Downtown Club Penguin

Penguinese spoken here

Textual workaround

Undercover Mom in ClubPenguin, Part 2: Let's get this party started!

by Sharon Duke Estroff

I have to admit I’m pretty darn cute. My avatar, ChillyLily437, that is. I’m plump, perky, and very pink. Only one more hurdle to jump before I can make my cybersocial debut on Club Penguin: an emailed permission slip from my parents.

Rather than submitting my real email address (this is a stealth operation after all!), I open up an alias email and have the CP powers-that-be send the consent form there. Within milliseconds my new inbox is flashing with a message informing me of "my child's" Club Penguin registration, I’ve clicked the requisite activation link, and my undercover snowball is officially rolling.

Mom Break: Okay, I promised myself I wasn’t going to put my mom hat back on until at least Day 3. I mean, what’s the good of going undercover if you keep taking off your disguise? But PLEASE! Does Club Penguin really think that this parent email permission click deal is a viable safety measure? I created an alias email account in, what, two seconds? Our digital native offspring could easily do the same. I’m not saying that my child or your child would use a fake parent email to gain access to Club Penguin or a similar social network site. Or that one of their friends would use a fake parent email to grant Club Penguin access to every kid at school. I’m just saying….

So you may be thinking, "What’s the big deal? Club Penguin is not MySpace or Facebook, it’s a kid-oriented website for heaven’s sake." But that’s precisely my point. The target market for social network sites like Club Penguin is ages 6 to 14 (more realistically 6-12, as few teens would be caught dead on such a “babyish” cyber-hangout). These are not teens, but elementary-aged children who need consistent parental presence, supervision, and direction in their lives. The ease with which kids can sidestep Club Penguin’s parental consent process - one of the Web site's most basic safety measures - represents but the tip of a very precarious iceberg indeed.

Next week: "Snow Day"; here are my intro to Undercover Mom and Part 1 of Sharon's series.