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Club Penguin's Birthday Today: Disney's Virtual World is Four

by Amy Judd | October 24, 2009 at 10:22 am

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Club Penguin launched a few years ago from Disney and is the largest virtual community for kids in the world. Today is Club Penguin's birthday, having launched four years ago today and many are throwing Club Penguin birthday parties to celebrate or searching the site for special cheats in honor of the day.

Club Penguin is a virtual world where you can 'waddle around and meet new friends' as a penguin that you can name and control and interact with kids everywhere.

However, despite the celebration of the day, the success of a website that is aimed at such young children has caused some concern by watchdog groups, that children are surfing the internet so young and can be exposed to adult material.

Many children play the game without the supervision of their parents, according to a survey done in the UK by OfCom.

The proportion of youngsters aged eight to 11 who have web access in their bedrooms has risen from 9 per cent to 16 per cent in just the past two years.

The figure for children aged 12 to 15 has gone up from 20 per cent to 35 per cent.

At the same time, some 60 per cent of 12 to15-year-olds and one third of eight to11-year-olds say they use the internet mostly on their own.

When children are on sites such as Club Penguin, they are also bombarded with messages for products and services that they then can ask their parents to buy them.

OfCom's survey said that children visit sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, among other kids sites, but some don't have any parental controls put in place.

Club Penguin is four years old, but is it promoting what could be a dangerous environment for young children?

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A. Tran

at 07:43 on October 25th, 2009

I think the club might be a good way for kids to get together, however, their parents would need to be involved in order to monitor their children's activities. The website needs to be vigilant toward deterring adult contents.