Sippy Cups & Social-Networking: Togetherville a Facebook for Kids
Have you guys heard about the new website Togetherville? It’s essentially Facebook 4 Kids.
The social networking site is for children ages 6 to 10 and their parents. Togetherville makes a lot of strides to provide a safe place for kids to interact online. Though they can do art projects, play games and swap videos, everything is vetted first. Like Facebook, kids can have friends, interact with children of their parents friends and they can comment on posts and make status updates or “quips.” The comments however are canned and innocent: I (heart) my family!
All of this sounds good, but what’s the point and will it catch on? I’m sure the same questions were asked of Twitter and look how that turned out. But still sippy cups and social networking?
Togetherville says that as kids in what I call the iGeneration are more plugged into their gadgets there’s a need for a safe place for them to practice healthy social-networking habits. It says it helps them to become “good digital citizens.”
One of my girlfriends told me recently how her 6-year-old threw a fit because she wasn’t allowed to get her own Facebook account. My friend’s compromise is that they share mom’s. But you can easily see where that could get sticky. All of a sudden you’ve got 7-year-olds posting random stuff on your wall or some high school cockroach making inappropriate comments that you can’t delete quite fast enough.
Togetherville would work well for them, but it’s like all social networking, if no one participates what fun would it be. Would you be on Facebook as much if there were only 30 people in the Facebook world, as opposed to the 410 million that are there today?
So we’ll see. I have to admit I’m skeptical, but intrigued.
Darn it, I was writing a comment and it disappeared. Hate when that happens. Bottom line is, No WAY. No sharing Facebook, no getting his own social media account of any type until he’s…15?
If kids see their patents do it, whether it be on their computer or phone, the kids are going to want it too. I hate to say, and am not excited to gave to confront this, but who and what kid wants to have that safe place. They Want to be where their friends are…it is the parents that want togetherville to catch on. And from what I can remember, what my mom wanted for me though it was the wiser choice was certainly not cool and thus something I would fight to the death.