Sesame Workshop has recognized the important role the Internet plays in the entertainment and education of today's preschoolers. Their response was the development of a 14 million dollar website which aims to provide a customizable Sesame Street experience online. The site, SesameStreet.org, contains a large library of muppet-laden video clips and interactive games.

My first visit to SesameStreet.org. was bogged down with apparent server problems, a crashed browser and an experience that felt more like a step back in time than a glimpse of the future. For the most part I felt like I was watching Sesame Street on my computer screen, which is silly since it is microscopic compared to the mammoth TV my husband recently added to our home. The PlaySafe feature holds some promise. It essentially takes over your screen and will not let kids navigate away or minimize the window. Unfortunately, that's the feature that crashed my browser (Internet Explorer as recommended by the site) and left me unable to use my backspace key. The site also features the ability to create a "homepage" for your child with favorite games and videos. The system was moving too slow for me to test it out.

I'm looking forward to giving SesameStreet.org a second glance in a few days to see if they've worked out a few of the kinks. The site is still in beta, so I'd expect some rough patches here and there as they start getting a lot of users online.

One of my readers sent me a note to let me know that the much lauded Club Penguin Parental Controls don't seem to be doing what they are intended to do. They have since fixed some of the problems, but apparently the Parental Controls timer is still prone to cutting out early and the Connection History isn't recording things properly. Complaints to Club Penguin were met with a generic, "We are working to get these fixed and hope to have them ready soon."

Forrest, the parent, gave me a great analogy (and permission to share it with you):

In some sense I feel like I am letting my kid go over to a friends house to play. If those adults make some clear assurances to me, like "I'll sunscreen the kids if we are outside" and my kid comes home with a sunburn, then I trust them LESS than if they had NOT made the promise.  And when I ask them about it, they are kind of nonchalant about it, with some vague explanation.

Should virtual spaces online get a different treatment from me? Sure, I could sunscreen my kid, or use a kitchen timer at club penguin.  But what I really feel like doing is putting them in the "do not trust for anything" list. Am I paranoid? 

I thought I'd reply to Forrest on here, so that you can read my thoughts and chime in with your own.

My first reaction is that if a kids' website claims to do something, especially in terms of Internet Safety, they need to follow through. We trust that our children will be reasonably safe on that website (within the bounds they set), and if they break one part of our trust, where will it end? If something changes so that they can't or won't support a safety feature, it is essential that parents are notified. I complained about Webkinz World adding outside advertising without notification a while back, and I see this as a similar issue. The Parent's Guide at Club Penguin claims that you can "set play hours" and "limit the daily total" of hours spent online. If this is not the case, the guide is misleading.

The flip of all of this is that we are ultimately responsible for the health and safety of our own children. If it is absolutely essential to you that your child has sunscreen on, I believe that it is your responsibility to apply it yourself. If you don't feel comfortable with a particular adult and their ability to watch your child (especially due to a breach of trust), you need to say no to future visits. And the same goes for a website. The timer on a website is a trivial example, since spending too much time on Club Penguin is not really a "dangerous" situation. But if the language filters go out of commission, or malicious code (i.e. a virus) is somehow allowed to spread, that's a more serious issue.

In the end, I think that there is a difference between trusting a person and trusting a website. Software breaks and causes all kinds of problems. The staff at Club Penguin are presumably working to fix the problems with the parental controls. Assuming that it is under repair, and it's not a deliberate case of negligence (as in the sunscreen example), it should certainly be noted on the website, but I don't know if it warrants "do not trust for anything" label. That said, the parent ultimately needs to make that decision. There are other virtual worlds for young kids and tweens that may or may not meet your needs. Regardless, I think it's an important reminder to monitor our kids' Internet usage (quantity and quality) no matter what website they frequent.

I'm including a poll, so you can share your advice with Forrest, but please share your comments as well.