I read in U.S. News & World Report about a social networking website geared specifically for kids called Club Penguin. It's a website where kids can register and become a cartoon penguin in a virtual world. You walk around and explore this snow covered land, while you play interactive games and communicate with other penguins. Penguins can dance at the night club, snow-tube down a mountain, go ice-fishing, and then go to their home igloo to care for their fur-ball pet known as a Puffle. It sounded like something Maegan would thoroughly enjoy but my first concern is Maegan's safety so I checked in to it in more detail.

While most kids can chat openly penguin-to-penguin by typing on their keyboard, parents are able to set their kid's penguin so that there is no open chatting allowed. A kid in "ultimate safe chat" can only communicate with other penguins by choosing a from a limited selection of a few dozen common words and phrases. More importantly, nobody else can communicate to a kid who's in "ultimate safe chat" except by using those same preselected safe phrases. This makes it impossible for anybody to give or to get personal info from Maegan. After testing it out with my own penguin first, I signed Maegan up with an account.

Maegan absolutely loves it! When she's not on Club Penguin, she's talking about it. When she's not talking about Club Penguin, she's drawing pictures about it. We need to limit her time on Club Penguin or else she'd spend her whole day there.

Club Penguin has been described in the media as MySpace for kids. It is not. While it does share the element of collecting "buddies", MySpace (which I can't stand) is all about sharing personal information and photos, which Club Penguin does not allow. Club Penguin has also been described as Second Life for kids. It is not. While it does share the element of freely navigating a virtual world and communicating with others doing the same, Club Penguin is totally family friendly and players can not freely reshape their world beyond simple structured customizations.

Labels: internet, Maegan