Merging Teen and Main Grids?

On yesterday’s Metanomics show, Philip Linden mentioned the possibility of a merge between the main and teen grids. He said:

Generally, 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. I think that the educational opportunities for Second Life are so great for all ages that we need to make it as available as we possibly can to people. If you look at what we’ve done with the Teen Grid, I think we’ve done a good job, as a small company, of being inclusive and creating an environment in which teenagers were able to use Second Life, I think, perhaps earlier than, I don’t know, we might have been able to. We pushed hard to get that working.

But, 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. There’s an inability for educators to easily interact with people in there because we’ve made it an exclusively teen only area. Parents can’t join their kids in Second Life so problems like that are ones that we think are pretty fundamental and need to be fixed. 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.

Initially, I had the same visceral reaction it seems that many main grid residents had. “Umm… no.”

But let’s face it… if Linden Lab decides that’s what they want to do, it doesn’t matter whether I — or the rest of the main grid — think it is a good idea. They’re going to do it. If I can hazard a guess, they’re going to say “Use the age verification system we put in place to block off your parcels.” Which ignores the fact that people from many countries can’t age verify. It’s just legal camouflage that pushes the burden of keeping teens out of your parcel onto the residents themselves.

So how could they possibly make this work? (And by “work”, I mean that in the loosest possible way, since I am unconvinced this can happen without someone getting hurt.) Maybe the answer is one more land rating: G. Currently, land is PG or Mature. If there was the possibility of rated G areas — possibly a continent of them, to prevent camming into a non-G area — serving as a areas for educational institutions and other teen areas, those could be governed by tighter rules than PG or Mature areas.

The thing that struck me as I read posts in the blogosphere and the official SL Forums was that this is a really polarizing issue. Nearly all main grid residents say “not on my grid.” And nearly all the teen grid residents say “We’re bored and this is the answer to our SL dreams.” Sadly  for the teens, it sounds like if adults have their way, they will barricaide teens out of most of the mian grid, meaning that the teen grid doesn’t really expand, just ends up connected to the main grid.

Who would benefit from this? Well, if my understanding is correct, the burden of paperwork for the teen grid is a pretty big one. If suddenly you didn’t have to take time to verify all the new teens, you could save time and man hours. Sounds like LL would benefit in labor costs. I’m not entirely convinced that the teens would benefit. And I think the consensus is that the adults wouldn’t benefit from this move.  So LL comes out the winner with streamlined operations.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the next few weeks or months, to see who ends up the winner or loser when these plans go forward. I’ll have to ponder whether I would let teens into Harbour. Would you allow them into your region?

Edit:

I posted some additional thoughts this morning to the SL Forums that touch on an aspect of this that I didn’t get to before I got sleepy and finished last night’s post:

Sadly, we live in a guilty-until-proven-innocent society when it comes to offenses (real or imagined) against children. Speaking as someone who ended up on a state child welfare watchlist without even knowing it had occurred, I am not interested in fighting my way through that kind of RL red tape ever again because of the actions of a minor.

For instance, a minor on this new merged grid sends me an inventory offer. I decline it, and go about my business. If they sent me a no-trans item, it still ended up in my inventory, just went to my trash (or is it lost and found? I haven’t had it happen in a while). I have still ended up with heaven only knows what, passed to me by a minor. The minor’s parent decides they’d better check up on them and checks their transaction history. ZOMG, they gave me, an adult, an inventory item. Of an objectionable nature. I must be a pedo. Good thing the lawyer is on speed dial. And the state department of child protective services.

I’m not saying that this can’t be done in a way that works. But the risks to responsible and totally innocent adults on the main grid are huge. Bigger than I think LL has thought through.