Rather hotly debated on the SLEd list this week has been a proposal from the Global Kids network that SL moves to allow some mixing of the teen and main grids. The proposal is quite well worked out: both grids should have "restricted" areas - private for teens, and private for adults - and some shared or public areas - the PG sims for the main grid and after the rejigging of the teen grid map an "adult's allowed" continent on that grid.
As you can imagine, opinions are rather strongly divided, even within a single post. To try and sum up the main points:
- How do we protect kids from adult content?
- We know teens break the rules and cruise the main grid anyway, surely a system to let them do so in a legitimate way is good?
- Given the curious mix of PG and mature sims butting up it's impossible
- This proposal would make it possible for families to share SL together, which they currently can't (there are people who see this as good, those who see it as bad).
- In RL we mix teens and adults in many situations and circumstances - families, shopping etc. Teens can, and do, find adult content if they look at all hard. Why does SL maintain this artificial division?
- Mixing grids addresses a burning need of teen educators where their students get moved "up" to the main grid on their 18th birthday rather than at the end of the school year, and would let them keep their classes together.
- There are teens IRL who get on better with adults than other teens, we're denying them that chance in SL.
- Families can "share" SL by having teens logged in and parents sitting with their children IRL.
Speaking for myself I'm ambivalent. I think something with a "family continent" that allows mixing with teens not allowed to leave it, in the same way adult teachers are tied to a single continent in the teen gird makes more sense - it is suddenly easy to police for "no chance of seeing adult content" and I'd be fascinated to know how the US child protection laws would react to such a thing. In the UK I'd guess (I'm not a lawyer but I am a teacher and work with under-18s so I know this bit of law reasonably well) I would say it would be risky, but probably OK.
But what do you think?
