Global Kids' Digital Media Initiative

This just in! I received the following email for me from Blue Linden this evening.

Short story:
The geography of Teen Second Life is going to be restructured to clearly delineate teen-property from adult-property. This has occurred, in part, due to the conversations over the past three months, spurred by Global Kids, initially supported by the MacArthur Foundation, about the role of adults in the teen grid. The teens spoke and were heard.

Longer story:

This is an excerpt from an email I just happened to send to Blue and Claudia last week:

I envision... a proposal to Linden Lab for a clearly delineated line of the Teen Grid map separating Linden & Teen owned land from adult owned land (whether public or private). As Blue said recently during his interview with Philip on GK island, "It could very well be that in the next year, island ownership by individuals as well as edu/non-profits like Gkids becomes the primary business model for TG." I think that is correct. And this can mean more ADULTS owning land in the Teen Grid than teens. This is what leads teens like Cheesepuff to recently write, "Stop calling it the teen grid, at this point, it doesn't really deserve that name. Call it the near everybody is homeless grid. Call it the being taken over by adults grid." I think one approach for maintaining the youth-centric nature of the teen grid, while still allowing adults to own sims,... might be to go the route of making a clear physical delineation by making an adult section of the Teen Grid.

For example, look at this section of the map below:

So, the yellow circle is where the Global Kids estate is located. To the right is "orientation island". Just south is "TSL weapons testing sandbox." All of these adult and teen owned islands are all jumbled together, right off the mainland.

One week later I received the following mass email from Blue:

You are receiving this email because your estate is scheduled to be moved! In the interest of making it more obvious which teen grid sub-estates are owned by adults, which are owned by teens and which are owned by Lindens, we are going to be cleaning up the layout of the teen grid. This will better allow residents to choose to engage or ignore the experiences offered by educators, non-profits or businesses and to further empower those residents who would like maintain a teen-only experience in Second Life.

The new layout for the teen grid will place all Linden owned Islands to the Northwest of the TSL Mainland, teen owned Islands to the North, and adult owned islands to the South.

We will be choosing the location you will be moved to, but should you absolutely hate where we put you, we will provide one free move to a location of your choosing, within the zones described above. In the interest of thinking ahead, please reply to this email within a week, to let us know if you have specific plans to expand in a particular direction in the future. Say you know that you will be adding 3 sims to the south of your current estate. We don't have a date yet when the move will happen, but downtime is expected to be negligible as the process of moving your sim will require only a brief restart of your region. We hope that this process is of minimal impact on you and that the new layout is to your, and everyone's benefit!

This is fantastic news, not only for the future growth of teen-centric Teen Grid but also for the role of teen residents to help shape the future of their community. In the future months, Global Kids looks forward to working with TSL residents, Lindens, and other open-access island owners like ourselves to create a more formal process for teens to help shape the role of adults within their grid.