Interacting with online users in a 2D world. Sharing music. Swapping stories. Creating avatars. Keeping up with friends. Sound like you? Perhaps, but it's also true of a growing segment of the social networking audience: 6- to 8-year-olds.
Thanks to sites like Webkinz, Club Penguin, Barbie Girls, Nickelodeon's Nicktropolis, and Disney Extreme Digital, kids in this age group are spending about 45 minutes a month in front of computers keeping up with their social networking sites. While this may not seem like a lot of time, it cuts into TV viewing time which is exactly what these sites want. Parents: this is your wake-up call.
"These tweens have a crosshairs on their backs," said Liz Perle,
editor-in-chief of Common Sense Media, a nonpartisan San Francisco organization
that evaluates media. "The corporations know if they can get (young customers)
now, they will establish brand loyalty for life."
Parents that once worried about older kids hanging out on MySpace now have cause to be concerned about their younger children. Perle believes that 6-years-old is too young to be social networking and that an hour of screen time is appropriate for 8-year-olds.
This still seems like a lot of time to me. My eldest (almost 5) is blissfully ignorant of the computer. I suppose it's because my husband and I are so addicted I'd like to postpone the experience with my kids for as long as possible.
Perle adds, "A 6-year-old should be learning how to work out social situations on the
playground, where you can read someone's facial expression -- not on some
two-dimensional Web site where if an (avatar of a) penguin doesn't want to talk
to you, he turns his back and walks away."
Word.
