Second Life: With Kids!

Two of the kids I babysit for, a girl and a boy, 9 and 6 respectively, are super techy. SO, I decided that the three of us we were going to do second life, together. This proved to be a wonderful idea, as the kids LOVED it, I got to see a different take on the game besides my own, and, of course, they were entertained.

We made our avatar, a mash-up of the three of us–a boy with long hair and glasses–and were getting ready to play. Next up, chatting. I felt a little weird chatting with complete strangers with both the kids, but it was fine! We talked to someone in Canada about their avatar–they seemed to have overridden some codes and uploaded a photo to make their avatar an amalgamism of two people in their family. 

We didn’t know any of the shorthand chat, but at first I thought that would be okay, because I grew up using AOL Instant Messenger, and so I thought “I know all those online abbreviations.” Boy, what I wrong. The ONLY one that I knew was “IM,” and almost everyone knows that anyway. So, we learned “TP”–teleport, “L$”–the currency of SL, “AR”–abuse report, and plenty of others.

I wasn’t great at moving quickly, but the kids were all over it. (Should I be surprised?) Naturally, they were also super consumed by the economics of the game, that is, I wanted to save money to buy real estate, and they just wanted to buy whatever they saw.

Overall, we had a great time playing it; I have a feeling they’re going to want to do it again.