Let the Kid Speak

As we see an increase of online presence in our daily lives there comes a higher awareness of its apparent negative affects pictured in the media and unfortunately not always equal amounts of positive/beneficial publicity.  One area that seems to be hit the hardest is online gaming.  Parents are separating their children from such technology because of issues with cyber bullying and improper communication skills.  However, this is nothing new to game developers and hosts; creating positive communication environments in kids MMOs is a fundamental aspect of their success. 

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A blogger for Massively.com posted an article with some research they had recently conducted on younger children and their interaction with word filters and blockers within online games.  The current struggle for kid based MMOs is whether or not to implement a chat filter, to clean up profanities and protect private information, or to restrict the chat to preprogrammed messages.  The author, Karen Bryan, discusses both negative and positive sides, falling back more on the fact that kids will always find a way around filters.  Bryan makes a good point that by restricting them completely from interacting with others it defeats the purpose of the game and won’t teach them anything:

Similarly, while it's important for parents to stay on top of what children are doing online, we can't be sitting next to them forever. MMOs are, by nature, social environments, and kids need to have the opportunity to collaborate and coordinate with other players in game. But at some point, they will be on their own, and if they understand how to put things in context and how to react to potential harassment, they'll be able to do an even better job of filtering than the game can.

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One site mentioned in the article was FilamentGames.com This site educates individuals through the use of these kind of online games in subjects including basic elementary forms of plant and microbiological sciences, political fundamentals and debating, and space and ocean exploration.  The site includes a few MMO style games and due to their basic programming rooted in education, parents can know that their children are interacting safely.

Parents will always be concerned for the children’s’ safety, so through working together and taking initiative to learn more about the uses of online communities they can find some reassurance and even help with protection.   In a recent article from the Huffington Post, the authors, also concerned parents, give insightful information about maintenance of children’s activities online as well as rules to follow and/or remember while monitoring them.

Online people are not alone; the Internet is just a constantly updating and changing social community we are creating.  So if you have children or when/if you do in the future, allowing them to use the Internet and join these online communities may be hard to handle at first; just remember they aren’t alone and everyone online isn’t out to hurt them, as a community there are people that will help build there communication skills and help them when they are in need.