Last Friday, the Second Life Teen Grid (TG) merged with the Main Grid (MG) (you can see the area below in the bottom right of the map), putting a definitive end to a long-standing separation of teens in this virtual world, that caused more problems than it solved.
The original idea of separating the13-17 year-olds was to protect them from some of the more unsavoury aspects of (second) life, but the over-strict regulations that existed to keep non-teens out of the TG meant that a lot of teenagers simply lied about their age in order to get an account in Second Life.
The original decision taken by Linden Labs was to close the Teen Grid, but they reversed this decision and plumped for a merger because of pressure from educators.
Now, everyone aged 16+ can join Second Life, but those under 18 have restricted access to certain areas. Some of the other teens (aged 13-15) still have access to certain islands, which have been moved, but which are not open to the public. However, most of the Teen population under 16 has been left without access to this virtual world.
As far as the British Council Isle project is concerned, our MG island was a duplicate of one of our TG Isles (it was principally used as a show-case for the TG project) and so we will be closing this, and we have now opened our former Teen Grid to the public.
So come and visit us! You can reach us here: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/BritishCouncil%20Isle/232/125/40
The original idea of separating the13-17 year-olds was to protect them from some of the more unsavoury aspects of (second) life, but the over-strict regulations that existed to keep non-teens out of the TG meant that a lot of teenagers simply lied about their age in order to get an account in Second Life.
The original decision taken by Linden Labs was to close the Teen Grid, but they reversed this decision and plumped for a merger because of pressure from educators.
Now, everyone aged 16+ can join Second Life, but those under 18 have restricted access to certain areas. Some of the other teens (aged 13-15) still have access to certain islands, which have been moved, but which are not open to the public. However, most of the Teen population under 16 has been left without access to this virtual world.
As far as the British Council Isle project is concerned, our MG island was a duplicate of one of our TG Isles (it was principally used as a show-case for the TG project) and so we will be closing this, and we have now opened our former Teen Grid to the public.
So come and visit us! You can reach us here: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/BritishCouncil%20Isle/232/125/40
No comments:
Post a Comment