Our campaign for social networking website School Together Now has crossed the Atlantic with the publication of a great piece in Canada’s National Post. Click here to visit the paper’s website or read copy pasted below…
A social networking site aimed at children as young as seven is redefining the notion of online debate and raising questions about how young is too young to converse online.
Conversations on the virtual playground launched by a new British networking site sound like this: “I love High School Musical. Kelsey is my favourite,” says Rose.
“My favourite character is Gabriella. Have you seen HSM3?” asks Holly, who follows it up with a big emoticon smile.
“I hate them both so much,” says Matty.
Such is the tone of the children’s debate at schooltogethernow.com,what is believed to be the first children’s Web site with the explicit goal of social networking. Older children, in their teens, have the social networking Web sites MySpace and Facebook; younger children have such widely popular Web sites as Webkinz and Club Penguin, which are primarily virtual-reality play sites with a limited form of socializing.
What makes schooltogethernow different is that it is geared specifically to networking.
The site, which went live about a month ago, began as an outreach project for Esther Guy, a busy working mother in Surrey, England.
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Ms. Guy, 33, said she created the site because she never had time to meet other parents when she picked her seven-year-old twin girls up from school. So she decided to move the schoolyard gate online. And when a friend’s 11-year-old daughter used her laptop to chat and post pictures of herself on the networking site Bebo, Ms. Guy decided to make her site for children, too, so they would have a safer place to interact.
“I’d like to be able to create a site where parents feel comfortable with their children using it and that they’re safe,” Ms. Guy said.
Since the site went live, close to 800 people have registered –more than 60% of them children, aged seven to 11.
While parents trade homework advice over the bright orange Web site, grade schoolers create a profile with their favourite pets and hobbies, chat with friends and play games.
The new Web site is part of a growing trend of children entering the virtual world at ever younger ages. Web sites such as Club Penguin, a snow-covered wonderland where children can interact and play as animated penguins, and Webkinz, where children make their stuffed animals come alive, are online utopias for youngsters.
Club Penguin boasted about 12 million users in August, 2007, and last year, Walt Disney bought the Kelowna, B. C.-based company for $350-million. While it does not advertise or collect personal data, other networking sites gather demographic information from the site and sell it to marketing companies.
Safety is an obvious concern with children’s Web sites, says Matthew Johnson of the Media Awareness Network He worries that any site designed specifically for children could be an easy target for online predators.
“All the technical controls and privacy controls on a site are no substitute for sitting with your kids and teaching them to think critically about being online. Adult involvement is key,” he said. Like most Web sites aimed at children, Club Penguin requires a parent’s e-mail address to sign up and all messages must be pre-approved to weed out inappropriate language and personal information. Ms. Guy’s site is moderated by four volunteers who remove links that are not child-friendly.
Even if it is a perfectly safe online universe, experts are asking how young is too young to get hooked on the Internet.
Psychiatrist Arlette Lefebvre of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto said children using the computer to e-mail their grandparents is one thing, but online social networking at a young age could hurt children’s development.
“It is the age when kids concentrate on learning in school and learning to make friends face to face,” she said. “But is there really developmentally a need for a seven-year-old and eight-year-old to meet people online? I don’t think so.
“The younger you expose kids to all kinds of media, the more immature their neurological system and their judgment is.”
But Ms. Guy maintains that a child’s use of the Internet is inevitable.
“Parents, I suppose they are a bit skeptical allowing their children online, without realizing that these days, you can’t only get online using a computer — you can access it by your mobile phone or your Xbox,” she said. “Pretty much every job uses technology in one form or another, so it’s a life skill they have to learn. As long as it’s in moderation, I don’t think there’s any harm in it.”