Kids as young as 7 are logging on to multi-player sites to meet their friends in cyberspace--starting with kid-centric sites like Disney and Toontown (and hooking up with friends whose screen names they know) and moving on to games like Age of Mythology where they can play online against each other as well as complete strangers. It's created the "virtual playdate" that starts with a coordinating phone call and then launches online. Moreover, they can have private sidebars of text in most of these gangs to talk to each other about strategy or where to go next in their on line world escapades within a game.

Instant messaging has become the bane of many parents' existences, consuming hours at a stretch of kids time--from productively sharing notes about homework to more often keeping a constant banter of conversation that can interfere with homework and leave kids starting in their tween years glued to the computer screen. Moreover, cliques have worked their way into this IM world--where kids will block another's messages, to the devastation of the child who has been excluded--an outright rejection they often struggle to fathom.

For these same kids, who of course in addition to their IM screen names have email accounts--email has taken the place of long-distance phone calls, and everyone from camp friends to schoolmates have emails zinging around. They pass along junk mail, jokes, digital photos. And the advances in technology in this area are daunting to parents--just recently my daughter emailed me a picture of herself and a friend having taken a photo with the friends phone?! Who knew??

Just last week my 10-year-old, with a sigh, gave me this debriefing on instant messaging talk (which reads like Greek as you peer over your child's shoulders to ascertain what's going on their computer, and as I get cryptic IM messages from her):

She told me to get my answers short, brief--"that's just how it's done Mom!" and gave up on me to get back to her friends!

And it's profoundly unclear just what impact all this will have on social development--except to create virtual social interactions from the isolation of one's home. Even more shocking is the number of parents who ABSOLUTELY feel it is the right thing to do to read over their child's IM messages when she/he's out of the house (this is the new version of reading your child's diary).

One piece advice to all parents--keep the computer your child uses in a "public space" in your house so you can monitor how much time your child is spending online and occasionally check in.