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Welcoming Teen Grid Organizations to the Main Grid


Terrence Linden

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It has been several weeks since we announced that Teen Second Life, our Second Life grid for 13- to 17-year-olds, will be closing at the end of this year, and that we would be admitting 16- and 17-year-olds to the main grid. Today, we are excited to tell you that we will be able to continue serving all of the educational and not-for-profit communities of the Teen Grid, including those that serve 13- to 15-year-olds, without an interruption in service.

Since our announcement, we’ve been speaking with many people from the educational and not-for-profit communities in Teen Second Life to better  understand their needs and determine what measures would be necessary to create a safe, secure, and collaborative environment for their students and faculty. I’m happy to say that we are able to meet these needs, and allow 13- to 15-year-olds access to limited locations on the main grid, with appropriate controls for administrators. We will implement these controls and transfer these rich and exciting projects from Teen Second Life before the end of this year.

The 13- to 15-year-old students affiliated with these organizations will be unable to visit any regions except those of their hosting organization, and those accounts will not have the ability to search the Grid or to purchase items from the Marketplace. Unlike on Teen Second Life, adults that work with these students will now be a part of the broader Second Life experience, allowing them to bring rich educational content to their students. The ability to invite organization-approved guest speakers and other approved members of the community to safely interact these students will further enhance their learning experience. For more details, see the Teen Second Life transition wiki page.

We are happy to provide this support for the educational community in Second Life, and we look forward to the community continuing to create  innovative and exciting projects!

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After seeing the video of Phillips speech at SLCC and hearing the educator speak her concerns - this sounds like a great solution. Well done to all involved.

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Still no word on how you are going to prevent us from being arrested for being naked in a hottub in our own homes in Mature, and little Betsie gets caught by her daddy camming in and watching us.  You are putting your customers and yourselves in legal jeopardy by allowing children (legally they are children) into an adult grid with no way to prevent them from seeing adult materials.  If you ran an adult video store and failed to keep the underaged kids out, you'd be arrested.  I don't know why you all believe that running an adult grid and then inviting underaged kids IN will end up any differently.

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For us at Global Kids, we see that as very good news, since we work with youth from a range of ages.

We look forward to developing programs that integrate youth into the Main Grid community and resources in ways that build their leadership skills, global awareness and civic engagement.

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I am glad to hear it. With mesh coming to Second Life, it is a good thing that young teens will have a reason to learn 3D modeling and a reason to experiment with it. Second Life could spark an interest or passion in a talented young person that could lead to a very real and rewarding career in 3D Graphics down the road. If a young person learns to script, it could lead to an interest in programming. Anything that sparks the creativity of young people is a good thing in my opinion.

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Seems you are not aware of  or ignoring some details.

13-15 years: are NOT able to 'visit' the grid. They are NOT able so 'see' regular gid-sims. They're restricted to specific sims, assigned by the educators. They are NOT able to see search results neither in world not at marketplace.

16-17 years: can connect to the regular grid, but are limited to PG sims, not able to see mature sims, even if these are adjacent.

So it's very unlikely 16-17 year olds will visit your private mature place (at least the teens with proper age-info - the others (age-cheaters) are already talking on mature places.).

And it will be quite impossible that you meet 13-15 agers - you have no access to their edu-sims, they have none to the grid.

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This is good Terrence, as I did see that a few of the educators, that were at the SLCC,  were very upset about dropping the 13 to 15 year olds.  This is a good move on Linden Labs part to keep these kids engaged.  I am also glad that you will have the proper controls in place, to  insure the kids safety.  Hats off to all of you for coming to that conclusion!

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Why wouldn't they be able? I can sit in one sim and cam pretty much the entire area of every sim surrounding it regardless of it's rating. I would hope LL has the sense to place the really underage sims so far out away from anything that that wouldn't be a danger. Now if they'd do the same for the 16-17 year olds and limit them similarly, the issue would be solved.

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their cameras will still reach outside of the pg sims and while i get what you're saying i also get what shockwave is saying. there's no way to block their cameras from seeing into the mature sim that borders the pg sim. they were not expressing concern about visitors but camera panners.

unless SL will be moving the mainland around this is still a problem.

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16-17 years: can connect to the regular grid, but are limited to PG sims, not able to see mature sims, even if these are adjacent.


Have you got a quote for this? I know it has been on the discussion table but nowhere have I seen it officially stated that 16-17 year olds won't be able to see adjacent mature sims.

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While I am in favor if integrating all ages into the grid, this is NOT a complete solution.

 

How does Linden Lab intend to block teens from getting adult content from 3rd party, non-SL Marketplace sources? A simple web page could be set up that automatically triggers a script to transfer an item to another user.


No, the only way this would be secure would be if teen accounts are explicitly disconnected from receiving objects from other avatars, and could only get objects that are dispensed from estates.

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Personally I am glad to have more people on SL to make stuff and hopefully buy some of my items. Lots of friends I have are 18 anyway and 2 years doesn't really make much of a difference as far as I am concerned.

More People = More Fun

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Terence this is a positive and by the sounds of it, well thought out plan, but why can't you extend this to all 13-15 year olds and give them space to socialise on a continent whereby they can't search or access items on other continents? You could even give their parents access to their continent and see how that works out.

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Applauds Linden Labs for being proactive about this and showing the ed community that they are serious about serving this unique but important population. Thanks for recognizing the need to work on this issue way in advance.

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Well I think its good thinking of the Lindens on behalf of the younger teens. Regarding the 16-17 year old, I'm not looking forward to it. I was in Magika Hair today for just a bit, with some v immature people & it only reminded me what we'll be dealing with even more when they come on board at the beginning of the year. It'd be nice if they could have their own area too. I see a future of gestures galore lol.

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The scenario you pose isn't very likely, is it? Why would LL park an educational sim right next to a mature sim? And who is Betsie's daddy going to call, the local police? And say, 'My little girl saw a naked fox sitting in a hot tub, now go arrest him!' And somehow, they figure out where you live in RL, and show up at your door?

Try looking at it this way: they're not inviting in children, they're inviting adults to host a sim that's restricted to a particular group of children and adults.Children will not be able to leave that sim, either by teleporting or by using Search. The adults hosting the sim will be responsible for the well-being and conduct of the children, just as they are in the RL schoolhouses they all occupy. Personally, I anticipate a hearty interest on the part of parents in SL, who'd like to have a sim where their children can enjoy SL under the watchful eyes of themselves and like-minded parents of their acquaintance. It strikes me that it would be a great business decision, getting kids into SL on private, protected sims. Let their parents bring them fun stuff from other sims, and teach them how to build. Then they might actually stick around once they're old enough for the grid.

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I'm not sure where I did read it (will try to find), but it sounded like there is no question that 16-17 agers get this limit. When they stand on a PG sim and look towards the neighbor mature sim, they'll only see the ocean. The mature sim will not appear.

I'll give it a try to find this statement. However, LL drives a quite straight line with the age thing. So i'm quite sure they will prevent minors from seeing moderate/adult sims.

Technically, of course teens can move their cam to a location where a mature sim exists, but it's also possible to prevent a viewer to 'download/display') blank sea, instead of the land/content.

 

Edit: i did NOT read about it at this jira SVC-6242, it was somewhere else...

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I think that's good for the community, but it may cause some small problems regarding content. I just hope LL finds the right way to fix them.

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Really looking forward to further details about this. I am scheduled to demo Second Life for 2 days at the national 4-H leaders convention in October. Great timing.

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This is a great idea limiting these teens to either a PG sim or a stand alone sim. I am not so much worried about the sex part as I am about how annoying they can be. Most of the younger people that I have been around are nothing but beggars who become annoying or plain outright hostile if you do not give them money.

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I personally think this is a horrible idea and the kids should be kept on the teen grid until they become of legal age.  SL has very few safeguards against an underage person gaining an adult account as it is.  I am glad I am selling my island - I don't want the liability.  At least when the teen grid was up and running, and the main grid was for 18 and older, you could defend yourself against a "contributing to the delinquency" accusation by saying "No children are allowed on this grid at all - if they are here, it's their parents fault for not monitoring them".  Now we don't have that safety.

If they mandated everyone have full age verification, Including some way for Linden to absolutely verify the person who is applying for the account is the person who's ID is being used then maybe I could see it.  But the way the system is set up now, any slightly savy  kid can get a regular age verified account. 

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to me this would mean that all teens would have to only use the LL viewer... because i'm sure some 3rd party viewers would allow this limit to be ignored.

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