Togetherville: For Children, a Social Network With Training Wheels

Here is an article from Yahoo about Togetherville.com, a new social networking site targeted for parents and their 6-10 year old children. It is a semi-private social networking site that requires parents sign up their children. Children themselves cannot innitiate their own profiles and behavior within the site is restricted to pre-constructed comments. It was created by a father who wanted his young son to enjoy the benefits of virtual communities while limiting potential social risks and cyberbullying. Ultimately, parents construct a hand-selected network of people with whom their children can interact. "The content on the site is curated so children can play games, make art projects, and watch or share videos, but everything they have access to has been vetted in advance," says mr. Dhillon, the sites creator.

It is interesting to see the new models of virtual societies that are targeted for chilren. While the site has a lot of potential, it is not without criticism and will definately change the cultural dynamic of social networking for young children and their parents. Nowadays, kids as young as 4 will be participating in social networking sites for their entire childhood. What will the backlash be when youngsters begin to rebel against their parents, their strict censorships, and their control over virtual identity? Even Mr. Dhillon himself says the site has its flaws, "We teach kids from a very early age, never let your identity be online, never let anyone know who you are, but were teaching kids some bad things. Kids dont learn how to be accountable." Accountability, a particularly interesting topic. The Internet and the virtual society landscape is definately creating generations of people who are more anonymous and less accountable, but what will be the future affects on our culture? Will they be able to transition into responsible, independant adults? Only time will tell.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/For-Children-a-Social-Network-nytimes-142793176.html?x=0&.v=1