Our 6 year old is into fairies and making them fly. Disney has done a wonderful job with their Pixie Hallow website, and it’s fun to create fairies and zoom them around. Here’s the issue: You can instant chat with other fairies and I immediately got worried that adults might be preying on innocent-barely-able-to-read girls who just want to hear “be my friend.” Any advice as to how I should monitor, and if anything COULD actually “happen” to my kid while she’s playing with in this very enticing imaginary world?

Hello Susan!

Welcome to our site, and thank you for taking the time to post.

Our 6 year old is into fairies and making them fly. Disney has done a wonderful job with their Pixie Hallow website, and it’s fun to create fairies and zoom them around. Here’s the issue: You can instant chat with other fairies and I immediately got worried that adults might be preying on innocent-barely-able-to-read girls who just want to hear “be my friend.” Any advice as to how I should monitor, and if anything COULD actually “happen” to my kid while she’s playing with in this very enticing imaginary world?

Pixie Hollow belongs to a class of websites built for younger kids. For another similar site, poke around neopets.. These sort of sites have excellent tools for parents. However, there are some other things you should do

To directly answer your question - if you are concerned about your 6 year old’s safety, you can turn off the ability to chat. In pixie hollow, click on the parents link on the left and click on parental settings.  There are several options to control who can message and contact her.

Some other points:

1. Make sure she is using the computer in a public place - perhaps the living room, or a place where you can quickly look over her shoulder.

2. She is learning some valuable skills right now! Research tells us playing games is a great way to learn basic IT skills. Let’s not squash her interest, but it is a VERY GOOD idea to set some limits. You can use this link here to see a pact you can print out and discuss with her.

3. I guess the ultimate fear is your daughter meeting some stranger online who finds out where she lives, and tries to do something horrible.  This is actually pretty rare. A far more likely scenario will be cyberbullying (which won’t happen until she turns about 13).

4. Finally, ask her to explain the site to you. It’s a wonderful experience for kids to teach and share their experiences with you.

Please feel free to post again, and welcome here.