Guess how you find out that your kid's game web site has a chat room? By being horrified by it. That's how you find out. By reading over your daughter's shoulder, and being horrified. Perhaps the only calming aspect of this is Sydney's non-understanding of the entire experience. Of course, nothing explicit or specific was said, but the use of the word "it" by this other "kid" has scarred me for life as a mother.
I spent about an hour on the game site, and in the chat room. I didn't invite any conversation, because that's gross, but I did eavesdrop on what everyone else was saying. (The chats are all in thought bubbles that everyone in the room can see, and show up sentence by sentence, or phrase by phrase, and then disappear.) There was one inventive use of the word "popsicle," which everyone ignored. But then it was all kids asking to be adopted, or trying to recruit partners for adventures, and the like: the normal stuff in the game.
As of now, I've changed Sydney's chat abilities, but that only restricts what she can say to other people. It doesn't protect her from what she is able to read. And when the offending phrase is a innuendo-laden use of "popsicle," I imagine it's difficult for the regulators on the web site to police.
I'm not at all a fan of this web site now. I had no idea that there were CHAT ROOMS for children on it. I mean, I remember how gross chat rooms could get. Now begins the delicate dance of telling her that her days on this site are numbered. I don't trust the people on it, nor do I trust the "regulators" to pay enough attention to what's going on.
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