After reading about the recent acquisition of social networking superstar Club Penguin by Disney, I started taking stock of other social networking sites available for kids. I have my long-term favorites like Whyville because of its educational mission, and Webkinz because of their tangible toy / virtual world business model. But after digging through dozens of websites that claim to have a social networking component, I realize that many of these sites apply this term loosely. For example, if a website allows a user to play many different games and activities online, complete with a customized avatar, and allows a user the ability to see other user’s avatars in games, without communication occuring between community members, does this constitute a social networking environment? If the communication occurs outside of a virtual world’s website, in the form of an email to and from members, does this mean such a service has a social networking component?

I assembled a list of kids’ social networking websites I’m currently watching. Each site has a very defined method of communicating with its members. They include the following:

This list defines social networking sites that are just for kids ages 12 and under, though some sites creep up a little beyond 12 years of age. The only exception I added to this list is Runescape. Runescape is a very popular massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) that was not specifically developed for kids, but kids have found it and they flock to it. Runescape is not for all kids, and parents should judge for themselves about whether it’s right or not for their own child. Runescape is a battle-like virtual world environment, and chat can occur with anyone who plays online, even though it is filtered and monitored. Since no age is recommended by the site, I recommend ages 11 or 12 and higher.

A few notes about my chart.

• Any site that includes ads and is marked with an asterisk (“*”) means that this site has ads only related to the products this company offers (i.e. Webkinz ads are just for other Webkinz items).
• In terms of cost, most sites have a free to use or a monthly fee component. Sometimes these sites have two tiers of service where the paid service offers more bells and whistles. Sometimes a product needs to be purchased instead of paying a monthly subscription in order to reach the higher tiered service.
• How communication occurs with community members varies. “Canned chat” means users can communicate with each other through a short list of pre-approved words and phrases. Nothing else. (Click here to see an example of ToonTown’s canned chat in action, or here for the history behind the development of this version of chat called “SpeedChat”.) “Filtered chat” relies on software tools to strip out bad words, names, locations, and inappropriate content. Many times a live monitor oversees all communication written back and forth to users, in addition to these software filtering tools. imbee is unique in that any messages that are sent to your child have the option of being approved by the parent before being forwarded on.

There are other sites worth knowing about, but span ages from older teen to adult. Sites like Piczo, Dubit, Faketown, and CyWorld (all ages). Generally I find the older the demographic, the less monitoring and filtering of messages between users.

If you’re aware of other social networking sites for kids or teens please do share here with similar details about target age, cost, and how members socialize with each other.

It’s official. Acquisition season in the children’s social networking world has begun. Moments ago, Disney acquired the wildly successful children’s social networking site Club Penguin for $350 million dollars. Club Penguin launched its unique online service for children in October 2005, just six months after another wildly successful social networking website for children, Webkinz. This past June, Club Penguin reached 4.7 million unique visitors to it site according to comScore Media Metrix.

While the folks at Club Penguin have recently been in discussion with Sony regarding the sale of the company, negotiations broke down just a few short weeks ago with the technology giant.

There has been a buzz of activity related to social networking in the last year and we’ve yet to hear the end of it. What’s noteworthy about this particular deal? Here are a few of my predictions:

• This is the first major acquisition in the children’s social networking space. Plan to see similar acquisitions soon.
• Many more social networking site for kids have launched in the last two months, with many more yet to be announced.
• So much activity is occurring in the kids’ social networking environment, that this specific online activity for children is positioned to become very crowded over the next six months.

Stay tuned for lots more activity and news in this space! (For related blog articles, see my posts in April and May of 2007.)

To most adults, knowing which technologies kids prefer and why, is at best, a guessing game. Which is more important: cell phones? iPods? MySpace? In the past year, some very insightful leisure time and technology reports about kids have come out from The NPD Group (see prior blog post in March 2007), Nickelodeon (prior posts in Nov 2006 and Jan 2007), and recently a new division of Weekly Reader called Weekly Reader Research. Each group has something very unique to share about kids and technology. Yesterday, portions of a new study called “The Circuits of Cool / Digital Playground” was released. This study, which interviewed 18, 000 kids and youth from 16 different countries, was collaboratively developed by MTV, Nickelodeon and Microsoft. This latest survey looks at technology and its influences on lifestyle of kids (8-14) and young people (14 – 24) around the globe.

Here are a few top level insights from the study:

• Technology has enabled young people to have more and closer friendships, thanks to constant connectivity.
• Kids and young people don’t love the technology itself — they just love how it enables them to communicate all the time, express themselves and be entertained.
• Digital communications such as IM, email, social networking sites and mobile/sms are complementary to, not competitive with, TV. TV is part of young peoples’ digital conversation.
• Despite the remarkable advances in communication technology, kid and youth culture looks surprisingly familiar, with almost all young people using technology to enhance rather than replace face-to-face interaction.

Here are a few data snippets from this survey looking only at kids 8-14:

• 59% of 8-14 year olds still prefer their TV to their PCs.
• 68% of 8-14 respondents said they felt safer having their mobile phones with them outside the home.
• When parents aren’t around, 8-14s are more likely to communicate with friends, participate in chat forums and use the internet for entertainment.
• Under the age of 14, kids generally use the phone as a toy. After 14, the mobile phone quickly becomes a means of self-expression and communication.

The full press release, which includes comparison data for kids and young people around the world regarding cell phone use, online friends, social networking, TV, computer use and more, can be found here.

Dr. Ellen Wartella, executive Vice Chancelor and Provost of the University of California at Riverside, and youth media expert, spoke in Boston recently at a conference put on by the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD). Ellen has been involved with many important studies regarding kids, young and old, and their media habits. During her presentation, Ellen discussed the ever expanding nature of media use by youth audiences citing three different studies that collectively span almost 100 years.

The first study presented was conducted in 1911 in New York City. 1, 140 youths age 11 – 14 participated in the study and were found to be spending 4 to 5 hours a week watching movies at the nickelodeon. It’s worth pointing out that movies were the primary media format consumed at the time by younger audiences; Radio and television were not available yet, and magazines specifically targeting this demographic had not yet been discovered as they would be in later decades.

Next, Ellen referenced a study conducted in the 1930’s outside of New York City in Westchester County. 795 high school youths were asked to keep a diary of their media habits. The results of this study showed that this audience had an average of 7 hours of leisure time during the week on weekdays and 11 hours of leisure time averaged over the weekend. This group listened to the radio on average for almost 5 hours a week (4 hours and 40 minutes) and watched about 5 hours of movies per week. Collectively this group consumed about 10 hours of media a week, out of a total of 18 hours of leisure time within that week.

The latest study discussed was that of the Kaiser Family Foundation on Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year olds, published in 2005. More than 2, 000 children were asked to keep diaries of their media habits. The results of this study found that this age group spends about 6.5 hours a day consuming media, primarily screened media, and of that, about 26% of this time is often spent using multiple media types at the same time. (Also surprising in this and related research at Kaiser which I discuss in a prior post that children ages 0 – 2 were found to be watching about 2 hours of screened media a day.) In another post I reference a 2007 NPD Group study that found kids ages 5 – 12 have about 6 hours of leisure time per day with about 14 hours per day over the weekend. While these two different studies were not conducted using the exact same age group, the research suggest about 45 hours of media consumption a week out of about 60 hours of leisure time a week.

If you would like to hear an audio recording of this entire presentation where Dr. Wartella touches on other aspects of media use, like the type of content viewed and food advertising to kids through media, click here.

Nickelodeon recently released a new study that looks into technology use by kids ages 8 – 14 and parents of kids ages 0 – 14. This new report called The Digital Family is mentioned as a follow-up to an earlier Nickelodeon report released in 2006 called Living in a Digital World which cited that 86% of kids ages 8 – 14 are playing video games online. While this earlier report has some very interesting findings about kids and video game, television, instant messaging and chat room use, the publicly available findings are not necessarily data rich. However, this new report is chock-full of great stats, providing excellent insight into Internet, cell phone, television and MP3 player use.

Among the key findings in this study, kids, as well as parents, report:

• a decline in the use of and a reliance on newspapers, maps, and dictionaries because of the availability of information found on the Internet
• a decline in radio listening as a result of MP3 players
• a continuing and growing interest in TV viewing and use of TV as a means to relax and unwind
• a declining interest in purchasing of music albums and CDs
• safety and piece-of-mind from owning a cell phone
• the empowering, creative, and educational benefits of having access to the Internet
• parents using the Internet over 33 hours a month and kids using the Internet more than 19 hours a month
• parents being just as tech savvy or even more so than their children

What this report calls into question is:

• older incorrect assumptions about digital media use and digital media consumption by kids and adults
• shifting perceptions about what is “important knowledge”
• traditional school skills being outdated
• the value of older print-based media and radio
• traditional music and information distribution method
• incorrect perceptions about parents ability to keep up with kids when it comes to technology

Technology and the Internet continue to change the world of kids as well as parents in amazing ways. And surprisingly television looks like it will be the only older media format to have ongoing staying power for young and old. But if there’s one thing you can rely on as a result of this study’s findings is that more change in our future… change with how technology will impact media consumption, communication, learning, family dynamics and wider social interactions. Assumptions about the way things have always been are being challenged in a significant way. The rules of child engagement are being rewritten right before our very eyes.

To read the full Nickelodeon Press release, and see the wealth of stats, click here.