Club Penguin is a social networking site for kids between the ages of 8 and 14 years.It was created in 2005 by two fathers in Canada.
One of biggest pluses of this site is its focus on safety. Whereas other social software sites for teens, encourage the sharing of personal inforamtion, Club Penguin forbids it. Many parents consider it as a safe place for their children.
Another interesting aspect of Club Penguin is that it generates its revenue exclusively from subscriptions. This means that there is no advertising on Club Penguin.
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2 comments:
My 9 year old girls love Club Penguin. I like that the kids are limited in what they can say within the program. You can choose a no chat version where they can only use a set of stock phrases to communicate, or you can choose "open" chat which lets they type, but doesn't allow for numbers (presumably to deter phone number sharing) or offensive language.
For my girls, the social aspect of Club Penguin is very flighty. They add and drop friends by the minute, based on who is playing the game, and they don't have any of their real friends on their lists.
I see some kids using CP to play at boyfriend and girlfriend with it - mostly by using heart emoticons and stalking each other around the game and making sad emoticons when ignored. A precursor to future txt msg relationships maybe?
I try to find teachable moments in their interactions with other kids to let them know about online etiquette and the difference between online "friends" and real friends. Hopefully it will stick and they'll be prepared to act responsibly when they get to "real" social networking.
LOL, my 10-yr-old daughter & 8-1/2-yr-old son also love Club Penguin. Ditto what Renee said about the social aspect being based on playing the game at any given time, and the only "real" friend on each one's list is each other.
I think this is ok. Some of the open chat is ridiculous (you can tell there are a lot of kids on there), like endless strings of "my sister is so annoying," "mine, too", etc. etc.
They also have complained about "weird" penguins who follow them around without talking, or who show up in their igloos uninvited. I use this to instruct them about real life social skills. :-)
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