Wednesday, June 13, 2007
A virtual childhood for real kids
Luanne Traud
Recent columns
- Marking a difficult anniversary
- My daughter, the voter
- A few new Voices would be nice
- A rush to legislate
From the RoundTable blog
Each year as school lets out I feel a familiar tug pulling me momentarily to the neighborhood of old, the one where dew lay fresh upon the lawns as doors fly open all along the street and discharge several sets of legs onto each front stoop.
I think of pickup games of baseball and kickball; of the smooth, sun-kissed warmth to the perfect hopscotch stone that falls exactly where I toss it; of peddling full speed across the field to hit the earthen ramps with enough speed to fly over the gullies, hoping this time that my stomach doesn't lurch; of roaming the woods for critters; of seeing who could walk the longest on stilts or jump the most rope or stay the longest on the pogo stick; of heading indoors only when my name, strung together with my siblings', was called for lunch or dinner or bath time; of the neighborhood kids lining up for haircuts (the girls eagerly climbing my mom's stool for pixies, the boys under great duress marching into Mrs. Meinen's for their crew cut); of scrounging for a nickel when we'd hear the nearing music, much like the song of the twirling ballerina in my jewelry box, from the Popsicle Lady's truck.
Real kids on a real street. This was my social network, only we'd never have thought to call it such a thing. Network meant the only three TV channels: ABC, NBC and CBS. And social? Didn't that word come before "science" in school work?
My, how those two words strung together have changed childhood: social network.
If I squint real hard while watching my 8-year-old's hands draw pictures with fat colored chalk on the driveway, I can nearly pretend that she, too, lives in a real world. But the bubble pops as she tosses the end piece into a bucket, picks up an armful of stuffed animals with little "Ws" stitched on their paws, and heads inside to the computer to "play" with her friends.
The animals, Webkinz, are the latest rage. They define today's childhood. For the uninitiated, a Webkinz appears as innocuous as a Beanie Baby should you happen upon one in a store. This, happening upon one, is unlikely unless you call the store every day to find out if a Webkinz shipment has arrived and then hurry to said store before every other child in Roanoke beats you.
Those whose homes are still blessedly Webkinz-free zones would mistakenly pass this off as just another craze: Haven't we been here before with Cabbage Patch dolls, Tickle Me Elmo and the like? Sure, but that was confined to the real world.
Webkinz straddle two worlds, thriving in a virtual world where urges are encouraged to grow. As they say at Webkinz "there's no end to the number of pets you can add to your family." And add you must or your pet will expire.
Here's how. Each store-bought animal comes with a secret code that the child enters on the Web site. Up pops a virtual look-alike pet, which the child names. She's spotted an empty room and some KinzCash to begin furnishing it. She must earn more money by playing games to buy more stuff. It's all about accumulating. All of it vanishes in a year unless you add another pet and another and another until, well, remember "there's no end."
If this is all there was to Webkinz and no more, kids would become bored. Here's the hook: You also get to invite guests over to play, your real world friends and your virtual friends that you meet on Webkinz.
It's like MySpace for tweens and it's just one of the many social networking sites popping up for kids as young as 6.
Sure, they all come with "parental controls" and some brag that their games have "educational value." Maybe. Who am I to argue? But that doesn't concern me.
What does bug me is that Webkinz and all the other social networking sites for youngsters trick them into thinking virtual play is a substitute for the real stuff.
What will my daughter's memories of childhood offer? When she thinks of chatting with her best friend, will she remember the hardness of the computer keys and the way they typed "Ha!" or "LOL," or will she remember the coolness the earth offered on a warm summer day as she lazed on a hillside with her friend watching clouds pass and guessing what secret shapes they concealed?
Is she harboring away the sounds, the smells, the taste, the feel of summers that she'll pull out and briefly touch in years to come? Or is she storing virtual memories that are as flat as her computer screen?
Traud is a member of The Roanoke Times editorial board.
