[staff] On Plans to Turn Second Life from an Age-segregated to a Mixed-Age Virtual World
For three years Global Kids has worked in the youth-only section of Second Life; it has been some of the most exciting work I have ever gotten to do in my life. Last week it was announced that eventually it will be closed. I wrote this in response and welcome comments. Thanks are due to my great staff who helped me shape my ideas and language.
If Linden Lab turns Second Life into a mixed-age grid we should not presume that, as night must follow day, that the need has passed for their youth-only grid, Teen Second Life (TSL). I would argue, in fact, that just the opposite is true, that the promise offered by TSL has yet to be realized and that replacing it with a mixed-age grid will only exacerbate existing problems that prevent youth from taking full advantage of this remarkable space.
The future of TSL has been in question for nearly as long as its been around. But last week, three years after it first left beta, Philip Rosedale addressed this issue at Metanomics. He said the following in response to a question from an audience member, Daniel Voyager, a recent graduate from TSL:
I think that the future of Second Life needs to be one where people of all ages can use Second Life together, and that's the direction that we're taking in our planning and our work… If you look at the problems with having a teenaged area, which is itself so isolated from the rest of the World, they’re substantial… We need to stop creating isolated areas that are age specific and, instead, look at how we can make the overall experience appropriately safe and controlled for everybody. So that’s the general direction that we’re taking there.
In the days that followed, the blogsophere has erupted with titles like “Bad news of the day: They’re thinking of merging the Teen Grid into the main one” and “Teen Second Life Grid Merge is Near.”
If done properly, the opportunities for K-12 educators and parents are enormous. But the discussion often focuses on whether or not teens can be safe in a mixed-age space and fails to address the values inherent in what Philip called “a teenaged area.”
Managed by thoughtful Lindens with the same laissez-faire policies that rode the adult grid to such fame, Teen Second Life has often felt under-resourced. Sure, it did what it was designed to do: meet liability requirements by creating a space free from adult content and sexual predators. But while the adult grid expanded to millions of users, TSL could barely reach a hundred thousand. Meanwhile, older worlds like Whyville grew from one to three million users while new ones, like Barbie Girls, attracted millions of users just weeks after launch. If the adult grid can be made safe for youth, what purpose can TSL still serve? Best to tweak the adult grid, invite teens to join, then close TSL down. Or so the thinking goes.
This train of thought, however, fails to recognize that regardless of why it was created, TSL soon exceeded its code. That is, it did not simply become a PG version of Second Life, as had been intended. It turns out that using the same viewer and grid codes does not mean that teens and adults experience the same Second Life. Rather, TSL offers youth the opportunity, individually and collectively, to own land, create and sell products, offer services, and become civic leaders. Some might say the same is true for adults in Second Life. And they would be right. But the difference here is that adults can do the same thing offline. Youth can not. Their abilities to move and think as they choose are dramatically curtailed. In fact, where most youth spend their days, they are not permitted go to the bathroom without permission from an adult. In TSL, however, they are in charge of their own destiny.
Why is it important for youth to have their own community? How is this different from a focus on keeping youth safe? The difference is that keeping youth safe, while a desired goal, sells everyone short. Youth deserve more. They deserve support to access their inherent abilities to fully participate in society.
Let's take the example of a playground. What makes a playground safe? Recreational equipment that are not broken, for example. Barriers to keep out drug dealers or predatory adults. Authority figures to police the space. How would this playground change if it were redesigned to not just keep youth safe but also support their development? The recreational equipment would be selected with an eye towards their developmental impact, such as supporting collaboration or creative play. The site design might offer scaffolded learning, offering different levels of challenge for different ages and abilities. The authority figure would do more than just watch and observe but get actively involved, building supporting relationships with the youth, and offer activities designed to engage and develop their abilities.
Global Kids, where I direct the Online Leadership program, practices what is known as a strengths-based, youth development pedagogy. We work in contrast to a deficiency model, such as an after school basketball program designed to “get kids off the street," to prevent bad things from happening. Rather, we build on the strengths youth bring into the program then give them opportunities to apply and develop them for a social good, such as organizing a voter-registration drive. Youth deserve to have a virtual world designed from a strengths-based model, not simply to protect them from the world’s evils.
So why focus on Teen Second Life, as there are many excellent virtual worlds in the metaverse? TSL is distinct from other virtual worlds due to the constructivist possibilities inherent in its core mechanic. The core mechanic of a game is essentially the thing you do. In Pac-Man you eat dots and avoid monsters. In Space Invaders you shoot ships. Those who use games for education know that the educational power of games lies in its mechanic, rather than, say, its narrative context. It matters less why you are eating dots, or shooting ships; the important thing is just that you do it.
In Second Life, the core mechanic (to the extent it is like a game) is building yourself and the world around; meanwhile, the narrative is a blank slate, created by those who came before you. This is currently unique in the ecology of virtual worlds. TSL is by its very nature a youth development program, albeit informal, empowering youth to use the strengths they already have to apply them in a social way. This does not mean adults are absent. Far from it. But adults are not there for their own interests but, rather, to explicitly support youth and their use of the space.
More importantly, these mechanics happen to line up with educational theory regarding 21st Century Learning Skills and youth leadership, the very things schools so often fail to teach yet are essential to success in school, workplace and the public sphere. As such, the potential for TSL to be a tool for both formal and informal learning is tremendous, but is far from being met. There are a variety of key elements missing from TSL to support its potential to become such a revolutionary experience, such as a youth-friendly browser and ways to scaffold the learning experience from one stage to another. But even with these limitations, it is a possibility space for developing 21st Century Learning Skills like no other.
So, when Linden Lab arrives at the direction Philip recently laid out, I will join with my fellow K-12 educators to give three cheers for a mixed-age grid. But in all the excitement let us not forget to integrate and replicate as best we can the remarkable aspects of Teen Second Life in this mixed age space. And let us continue holding out the expectations for developers of other virtual worlds to create youth driven constructivist spaces that can support the emergence of the next generation of 21st Century leaders and innovators.
