Teen Online Communities

Teen online communities are extremely popular online. They offer teens a place to communicate in real time, study, attend classes, and even work in a virtual setting. But are they safe?

More Than Social Networking

For the past 10 years social networking on the internet has grabbed media attention and emerged as one of the most popular online hobbies. Social networking allows teens and others across the world to interact with each other as if they were face to face or at least in the same time zone without huge phone bills and expensive postage.

However, the downfall has been that many social networking sites do not allow real time chat and even more are limited to chat. Sure, you can share a few videos or photos – but when it comes down to it you are just taking a few steps forward from the phone.

Important note: Teen Second Life (SL) was closed on 01/21/2011 and its contents were transferred to the Second Life main grid. Most of the information below rergarding Teen Second Life is mainly for historical purposes.

Teen Second Life has changed all this and become one of the most popular teen online communities. Teens can easily create a free account, create an avatar, and instantly interact with other teens in real time.

Teen Second Life is not only limited to chatting. Users will find kids using this teen online community to create study groups, learn new skills, find new friends with their same interests, share games, build anything from houses to vehicles, play with their garage band in a live venue, go on job interviews, start their own first business and do just about anything else they can do in the real world and much more!.

The Safety Factor

As with all social networking sites, Teen Second Life and other teen networking communities like Gaia Online, Spin The Bottle, Faces and Pizco have the potential for danger. Parents should slightly monitor computer use by their teen children and frequently discuss the positives and negatives of the internet with them.

The Second Life creator, Linden Lab, has also implemented measures to help keep teens safe. There isn’t any adult content in the Teen Second Life virtual world and Linden Lab uses Teen Second Life, to shelter teen users from the big amount of adult content available in Second Life. Teen Second Life is only for teens between 13 and 17 years old and few adults have access. Linden Lab is actually experimenting with password type controls and other systems for accessing the main adult content areas in Second Life.

As with any of the teen online communities safety will always play a factor. Teens should never give out any real life information to others. If they are asked their real name, age, or address they should immediately report the user requesting the information to Linden Lab.