The social world in cyberspace

Okay folks, I'm going through a major paradigm shift here. I"m finding out the cyberworld is a complex social arena, and my kid is part of the other world. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a technical newbie. In fact, I'm a web programmer. I have computer skills "better than the average mom."

But alas, I did grow up in the sixties, when there was no such thing as a tween crisis in cyberspace.

And there's no turning back for her. I'm the one that got a computer for each of my kids, and gave them web access, thinking that it's okay because I share the computer room with them. I'm the one that moved them to this town, where everybody that's anybody is plugged in.

Well it is okay; it's just that they're in a culture that is hard for me to understand. I don't think I ever built that "computer as social arena" compartment in my brain. I think I had better now.

Three of my kids play on neopets.com, a place where you can adopt a cyber-pet. I thought that was okay. Pretty simple. I often see cute little pets on their screen. But it's more complicated than that. I should have known.

Now I find out one of my kids owns a neopets guild, which is a collection of friends, but that's about all I know of that part of it. Something catastrophic happened, she said, and now she's in a crisis.

Last week's crisis had been enough for me to swallow. She told me that somebody hacked into her friend's neopets account, and then the account was frozen by neopets for bad behavior. (I didn't ask.) My kid spent hours with her friend trying to straighten this out with the company.Basically she spent all of Saturday afternoon on this project. Never saw the light of day.

My kid is developing technical skills? Okay, that's one way to look at it. She's learning how to deal with authority figures? She's being generous to a friend? All true.

But I pondered the value of a twelve-year-old spending her afternoon fixing something in cyberpsace. They never really got the problem fixed, as they could not convince the company that there really had been a hacker

Anyhow, today she told me a little more about that crisis. She told me that the neopets company now owns her friend's artwork because it's no longer accessible to her friend, but it's in the hands of the company. Artwork? Cyberspace? Ownership rights? I did not have this kind of life when I was twelve.

But here's what she went on to tell me that really blew my mind. Until yesterday she had failed to realize that since this other kids' account is in her guild, the hacker got access to the guild, and posted all kinds of trash. Now the guild is in peril, the accounts have all been disabled (don't ask me by whom but my teeny bopper could explain it), and today she went to school with this plan foremost on her mind:

She must find all her friends who are in the guild and explain to them what happened, and that it wasn't her fault. Now she's trying to preserve friendships and her own reputation.

In a way, because of computers, our children are more social, not less. But in the most innovative of ways that even the greatest thinkers of just ten years ago couldn't have imagined.

I was at a loss as to how seriously to take this. Was this a problem with real people or a problem with a computer game? I think I know the answer, but it sure caused new neurons to fire in my brain.

She's heartbroken over her guild, but as she talked it out with me, she also found herself straddling the two worlds, just as I do. After pouring out her heart to me, and apprising me of her urgent plans of the day, She said this:

"It's okay, though. It's just Neopets."