GameBizDaily interview with John Smedley
Sony Online CEO John Smedley says that 'parental controls' are a possibility in their online worlds.
"I'd like us to implement a parental control that would allow parents to receive an email once a day of every piece of chat that their child was able to see that particular day."
Now, if done in a way that notifies the player they are being monitored (to prevent abuse by spouses, siblings, etc.), I think this is an excellent tool. As a parent myself, I know that it is my responsibility to monitor "where my kids go and who they are with" wither it's going to a place in the physical world to hang out or going online from our living room (where the two family computers reside). Since I have a home office I am a *heck* of a lot more in touch with what the kids are doing online (most kid naughtiness online happens when they are home after school before parents get home, fyi, or if they have a computer in their bedrooms). Still, I'm up here in the office and they are downstairs. I don't have time to poke around in their accounts every week or stare over their shoulders and check buddy lists so I just don't let them play anything with player to player chat. Even puzzle pirates has people soliciting sex play (which happened while I was co-playing the game with my 8 year old!) so multiplayer with chat is completely out until they are a bit older.
But that is the problem: you can't ban tweens and teens (mine are still young enough that my MMOG/virtual world ban isn't crippling their social and tech skill development) from virtual worlds though because it's a communications, work, and entertainment medium of the future. People *will* telecommute more often and will use online virtual spaces for education, employment, and important socializing (making friends and getting dates isn't just 'optional' to anyone with a healthy happy adult life). Banning tweens/teens from these places online is only going to foster more media illiteracy (i.e. the kid goes off to the real world and college a lot more vulnerable, uninformed, and isolated than need be when they DO inevitably get into online worlds). So *something* has to be available to bridge the gap between "no MMOs at your age" and "the privilege of total unsupervised freedom in MMOs" based on an individual child's needs. Some 14 year olds can be trusted to tell you everything and stay safe online. Some 17 year olds take too many risks and learn everything "the hard way." Individual parents need to be able to make a call based on their individual kids' needs and the tool Smedley suggests might be a partial solution. A kid will think twice about engaging in sex play, sharing personal info, or lying about their age/life if they know mom and dad are monitoring the talk. It doesn't stop the kid from playing the game and having fun, flirting, swearing, talking smack, etc. It just stops things from going too far, imo.
However this is spyware. And I don't like spyware in MOST applications so I do have reservations. What do other people think of this?
on Fri 25 of Aug, 2006 [01:28 UTC]
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