Posts by: Usha
FTC Finds Explicit Content In The Virtual Worlds: Are Children Protected?
24 December 2009no responsesUsha
Parents can no longer trust child-oriented virtual worlds as being a safe haven for their children online. Federal officials have recently declared that parents have to play a more active role in their kids’ virtual lives. They said that a majority of these worlds failed to adequately protect children from explicit sexual and violent content.
In fact, this study has been congressionally mandated with the Congress tasking the FTC with looking into this matter.
The resulting report released by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) analyzing the policies and content of 27 virtual worlds revealed a lot of interesting information. The commission found 70% of the virtual worlds allowing access to objectionable material.
The researchers investigating on behalf of the agency registered in these virtual worlds as children, teens and adults. They then recorded the explicitness of the content they found in those places by identifying it as low, moderate or heavy.
The FTC found at least one instance of either violence or sexually explicit content in 19 of the 27 virtual worlds they investigated. Five of the virtual worlds were graded as displaying heavy amount of explicit content, four offered moderate amount, and ten showed lesser amount of explicit content. Continue Reading →
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