And good web sites for kids? 12 years old and less.
 

Okay, I'm really after some sort of community web site suitable for an 11 year old. Type of second life thing. My son, who is 11, wants to use 'weeworld.com' but the reviews say whilst it looks kiddy, it can be adult.

Anyone know any?

Google wasn't any help, btw.



In addition, my 7 year old wants to use the web, since we spent most of the weekend wiki-ing about all the different digimons, copying pictures, printing them etc.

Re: And good web sites for kids? 12 years old and less.
 

I say forget the internet - give 'em a football and push 'em outside, the lil bastards.

[img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

Re: And good web sites for kids? 12 years old and less.
 

Webkinz

Re: And good web sites for kids? 12 years old and less.
 

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Webkinz

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my little sister loves this, and from what I have seen it is quite good

Re: And good web sites for kids? 12 years old and less.
 

Ditto. If I had kids I think I'd throw a hammer through the t.v. At least if they just go over to someone else's house to watch t.v., they'll get some socialization in there by accident.

Diebitter, lots of toys have websites built around them these days. Barbie, etc. Disney has Toontown, I think, etc.

And there is a huge lego community out there that is pretty awesome. There are videos of people's lego creations and step by step tutorials from simple to unbelievably elaborate, design discussion and advice, a number of contests including national ones, etc. It's hard to think of anything more wholesome than legos, and frankly if I had some here right now it would be impossible not to play with them myself. That's something you and the kids can do together without your being bored silly. Create new stuff together, then build stuff on your own, and intersperse with learning projects where the kid picks one design and you both build it, then your turn to pick one, etc. Keep or destroy as desired -- a perpetual sandbox and family activity. Or at least have the kid turn on to an online community that's actually about self-expression and accomplishing something, besides the pure yapping.

I think that's what I would do. Good for a really broad span of ages too.

Man quits job as lawyer to build legos

http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g6.../02legoart.jpg

http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g6.../07legoart.jpg

http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g6.../08legoart.jpg

Re: And good web sites for kids? 12 years old and less.
 

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Webkinz

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my little sister loves this, and from what I have seen it is quite good

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Yep. For 10 and under it is the current gold standard.

Re: And good web sites for kids? 12 years old and less.
 

i was deep into porn by 12

Re: And good web sites for kids? 12 years old and less.
 

My kids - going on 13 and 11 - have spent a lot of time on Runescape.

Re: And good web sites for kids? 12 years old and less.
 

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My kids - going on 13 and 11 - have spent a lot of time on Runescape.

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Do you leave them to it? Or monitor it at all? Or have they been told to raise any weird stuff to you?

Re: And good web sites for kids? 12 years old and less.
 

Diebitter,

We have had many talks with them about safety on the internet, like what information they should not disclose and what they should tell us about. But aside from those talks, we essentially leave them unmonitored on that site (except for us occasionally looking over their shoulders).

I'm sure some would think we're too lax, but I'm pretty comfortable with this approach.

Re: And good web sites for kids? 12 years old and less.
 

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Diebitter,

We have had many talks with them about safety on the internet, like what information they should not disclose and what they should tell us about. But aside from those talks, we essentially leave them unmonitored on that site (except for us occasionally looking over their shoulders).

I'm sure some would think we're too lax, but I'm pretty comfortable with this approach.

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No I like it, but I need to get some backgrounding on what to cover in such a talk. I can work most of it out myself of course, I just want to make sure it's comprehensive.

Re: And good web sites for kids? 12 years old and less.
 

I doubt I can come up with anything you haven't heard.

We're mostly concerned with divulging information. So, no providing any contact information, or even real name, without permission. (They've never wanted to so far, as far as I know.) Certainly, they are not allowed to meet anyone in person whom they find anywhere on the internet. That particular site itself does have some kind of monitoring in place, I think, because it caters to kids. It's also fairly huge. I've often wondered how many people here are aware of it.

Honestly, when they first started looking at it several years ago, I did some research and felt comfortable. At this point, though, I don't even remember what I learned.

Re: And good web sites for kids? 12 years old and less.
 

my 4 y.o. sister loves noggin.com

Re: And good web sites for kids? 12 years old and less.
 

Just out of curiosity, I just checked Runescape home page. They claim that there are 156,776 players currently playing.

And they have a parent's guide here.

Re: And good web sites for kids? 12 years old and less.
 

Here is a site that anyone with kids on the internet should check out.
NetSmartz
The site has information for Parents, teachers, Teens and kids. Go over the information and have the kids go over the things that apply to them. As anyone on this forum should know the internet is a great place and a sewer at the same time.

I have done presentations and been to quite a few lectures on Child safety on the internet and some of the stuff I have seen and learned about makes my stomach turn. The internet is a shopping mall for pedophiles. That is not to say that there are not a ton of good things out there for kids but safety needs to be stressed. The last lecture I went to on Internet safety for kids had an old statistic that 1 in 5 children on the internet had been propositioned by someone to do something they shouldn't. The presenter was a bit angry with the statistic because in her work she said she believes that number to be way off and that far more children are propositioned than that. One of the things she does is set up fake identities, usually 13 or 14 YO girls and go into chat rooms. She said at that time the longest it had taken for a character to be approached was 8.5 seconds. They always made sure to have a name used that made it very apparent that this was supposed to be a 13 or 14 YO child. They had 12 chat sessions going on live on a second while she did the presentations and is was amazing what some were saying to this character. The character had been created just the night before.

Here is another link to a site that has presentations on Internet Safety for kids and materials that are free to use by anyone who wants to take the ball and do these presentations in their area.

Internet Safety for Kids

Re: And good web sites for kids? 12 years old and less.
 

Gross.

Re: And good web sites for kids? 12 years old and less.
 

Sometimes your ears can play funny tricks on you. I was on the road traveling and talking to my 9 year-old daughter. She excitedly tells me "I got a webcam!" Stunned silence on my end as I have nightmares about my daughter on YouTube doing things I would not approve of. As I was about to gently tell her that no, I would not allow her to have a webcam she continued talking about all the fun things she would be doing with her new toy. That's I realized she wasn't talking about a webcam but something else. Turns out it was Webkinz. Big sigh of relief on my end. The site looks pretty safe, and she can interact with her friends and only her friends without us having to worry so much about predators.

A good friend of my son's (12 or 13 years old) had to get his myspace account shut down after a short time because from the moment the account was established there were pervs trying to message him. No thanks.

Re: And good web sites for kids? 12 years old and less.
 

Something else to remember is that predators are very very good at what they do. It is a very normal thing for them to start a relationship with a kid on-line pretending to also be a younger kid. They convince the kid to meet with them at the mall to hang out(or whatever) and all of a sudden they have what they want. The kid away away from Mommy and Daddy!

They do not always do this but it is pretty standard.

Re: And good web sites for kids? 12 years old and less.
 

Child molesters have to be clever, or they get caught immediately and that's the end of their career, sexual and otherwise. I wouldn't be surprised if a great many of them were more keyed into and better with kids than their own parents are.

Re: And good web sites for kids? 12 years old and less.
 

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Child molesters have to be clever, or they get caught immediately and that's the end of their career, sexual and otherwise. I wouldn't be surprised if a great many of them were more keyed into and better with kids than their own parents are.

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Exactly! They play on the things kids like and don't like. Stuff like, "Oh Ya, My parents suck too". It is interesting the way they get caught a lot of the time too. Cops will pretend they are 13 or 14 YO kids and chat with them and then the perv can't stand it anymore and sets up a meeting. Some will drive hundreds of miles to meet and then they are greeted by the cops.

There is also a group out there called Perverted Justice that works to catch child molestors who work on the internet.
Perverted Justice

If you want to see how the pervs woork check out that site. They have records on line of actual conversations they have had with the pervs. Just sick!

Re: And good web sites for kids? 12 years old and less.
 

Sounds too depressing to wade through! I used to read a lot about serial killers but stuff that sick is a downer and hard to take after a while. Now that I think I understand better a lot of how those guys' minds work, it's hard for me to find motivation to read about it any further. Even just a little begins to feel like an overdose. I'd highly recommend people who haven't read about such things do so, though. But a lot of it is going to be no fun to find out more about.

Re: And good web sites for kids? 12 years old and less.
 

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Webkinz

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my little sister loves this, and from what I have seen it is quite good

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Yep. For 10 and under it is the current gold standard.

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Last time I counted there were 12 webkinz animals in my house. My kids are nuts about that site. I like owning people(probably other parents) in roshambo, bowling and the trivia. LOL. A couple of the other games are OK too.

Re: And good web sites for kids? 12 years old and less.
 

For the one that likes the webs/digimon/virtual pets?... I used to play on this site a looooong time ago. Almost 8 years ago.

Don't know what to tell you about the predators... Never really had a problem with them, but then again, I wasn't very vocal in the bulletin boards. Mostly stuck to chatting with the homemakers of the site, really.

Site was fun when I had the time to spend on it. That's about all I got.

NeoPets

Re: And good web sites for kids? 12 years old and less.
 

** Jamougha, consider this your only warning. Do not link or post anything like this in the lounge (or elsewhere for that matter). **

Re: And good web sites for kids? 12 years old and less.
 

NSFW!
Attention Mods, not sure what he had in mind but doesn't seem loungeworthy



(thanks for bringing that to my attention Fish. - ks)