The EU Agency, the European Network and Information Security Network Agency (ENISA), released a report today on "Children on virtual worlds: What parents should know." [PDF] The report is pretty balanced, and far from trying to scare parents away from letting their children play in virtual worlds, it offers solid advice on how to make the experiences safer and more enjoyable, including flow charts on ideal registration and management processes for parents (left) and children (below).
"Not all online communities are created equal. There is a distinction when it comes to different sites and their educational value," conclude the researchers. "Many virtual worlds are free, and children can spend hours exploring and collecting pieces to build their worlds, thus enhancing their creativity and social skills. Virtual worlds require, in most cases, parental facilitation so harmful content could be spotted in time. In most cases, negative psychological effects can be reduced if play time is done within reasonable time limits and under parental observation."
The biggest advice often comes down to common sense for managing any child's Internet activity: keep the computers in a pubic space, set rules, make sure there are ways to keep some control, etc. Most of that comes down to social practices. More important for virtual worlds, I think, is the round up of tech solutions that should be implemented in worlds for kids and tweens, including filtering, monitoring options, abuse reporting and so on. While it's important that they're available, it's more important to educate parents on their options.
The report also cautions parents to be open minded about their children's behavior online and virtual worlds, as it may differ from in real life, a point I find particularly salient. While the researchers choose not to come down on one side or the other of whether virtual worlds can be useful for children's growth (they say it's too early, with some research promoting it and other reports denying), they do recommend that parents give children their virtual space.
"Stay calm and don‘t jump to conclusions if you hear or see of anything that concerns you about your child‘s behaviour or the behaviour of one of their online friends," the report recommends. "The virtual world communities and the web are social lifelines for most young people. If your children fear that you will simply their social lifeline, they are likely to be increasingly reluctant to share problems or concerns they may have."
The report is worth checking out--and I say that only partly because we're cited fairly extensively.
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