The financial dangers of virtual worlds for kids

Another virtual world: Taatu at NevilleHobson.com.

As Taatu is squarely targeting the 12-25 age group, I wouldn’t say it’s an alternative to Second Life (you have to be at least 18 to join SL). A European alternative to Teen Second Life, perhaps, aimed at 13 to 17 year olds.

What about Habbo Hotel, another European virtual environment (out of Finland) that’s aimed at kids? That seems a more likely comparison for Taatu. With both of these, the appearance of the environment, the avatar characteristics and other aspects of the look-and-feel are similar, much more so than the far more realistic Second Life environment.

Either way, it’s interesting seeing such virtual, er, real developments.

Sounds all whizz bang and wonderfully benign doesn't it?

But there are real problems here. Several years ago my young son got addicted to buying stuff on Habbo hotel using our telstra home phone account to pay for it. It cost me hundreds of dollars before I found out what was going on and put a stop to it. Of course, he had to tick a box saying he had the account holder's permission to spend the money but so what? That's hardly a responsible or effective measure and, of course, Telstra took no responsibility for it. The same thing happened to my brother-in-law and his daughter. A lesson for our family and for you, be careful if you have teenage kids and they get involved in virtual worlds.

It focuses on a broader question for me. To what extent are virtual worlds really communities, or just ways for greedy corporations to target the unwary and drain their bank accounts? After all for every SL millionaire there must be a lot of people who have got what exactly for their money?

Comments

[Tateru Nino]

"To what extent are virtual worlds really communities?"

Just skipping the excluded middle for the time-being, that depends entirely on the people in them, if you think about it a moment.

To what extent is a new housing development really a community and to what extent is it just a way for house/land corporations to make a buck?

Talking about Second Life itself, because other virtual worlds are different. We expect the provider to make a profit (well, eventually. It's not like Linden Lab have netted dollar one yet) in order to survive, because if the provider dies everything dies with it.

Everything else comes from the people who sign up, so... to what extent is Second Life really a community? Actually it's hundreds of communities. Thousands of them. Kind of like that stuff that goes on outside the door to your house.