EU Agency on Children and Virtual Worlds

ENISA, the European Network and Information Security Agency, released a report this week on "Children on virtual worlds: What parents should know."

Extremely well researched and up to date, the report does not attempt to scaremonger, but to inform, offering clear advice on how to make the experiences safer and more enjoyable.  It concentrates on virtual worlds aimed at children (7 years old and under) and tweens (8 - 12 years) and takes a calm view of the multitude of MMOGs available and the harm which may possibly come to their users.  Information is compiled from a wide variety of experts in the field, including, we were pleased to note, us (see references to eModeration's "Virtual World and MMOG Moderation: Five techniques for creating safer environments for children".

"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."

Much of the advice is familar and common sense management of any child's Internet activity: keep the computers in a public space, set rules, make sure there are ways to keep some control ... But what this report also does is to provide a glossary of the major virtual worlds and a guide to parents as to what they should expect a site to provide in the way of site rules, human and automated moderation, abuse reporting, their own options as regards content locks etc.

Interestingly, the white paper warns parents that their child's behaviour may be different on and offline: "Be open minded to reports from the virtual world community teams that your child may behave quite differently online than offline, face to face with you.It is not unusual for people to be more aggressive online, where they don‘t think anyone will hold them accountable. Take these reports as an opportunity to discuss with your child the appropriate tone of communications online."

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 (early research is still divided), 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 [cut off] their social lifeline, they are likely to be increasingly reluctant to share problems or concerns they may have."

Do read this report - and pass it on to parents of young virtual worlders too.

Download "Children on virtual worlds: What parents should know."