Working for Clams in Whyville

A safety-enhanced virtual world for teens and preteens allows kids to buy cool cyber-gear by playing virtual—and educational—games

by Heather Green

I was one hour into my life in Whyville, the virtual world for 8- to 15-year-olds, and I was faced with a fashion emergency. My avatar, Heffy7 (a combo of my nickname and the soccer number I had as a child), was simply uncool. She was an eyesore, a floating head bobbing around in the animated Whyville world. She needed a shirt and a pair of arms so she could look like the other avatars. But in the Whyville world of hip hairdos, studied sartorial styles, and carefully selected hats, picking the right look was critical.

No real surprise, right? It's a fact of life that kids are hyper-aware of how they look compared to their friends. And so it makes sense that this preoccupation would be at the heart of Whyville, too. But in a clever twist, Whyville is using this reality to further its goal of helping kids learn. To earn the money for my striped T-shirt, which cost 25 clams (the Whyville currency that's worth $1), I spent the next hour piecing together clues in a treasure hunt sponsored on Whyville by The Getty Center museum.

They paid me 50 clams to use clues to figure out where different pieces of art, including a 17th century cabinet and a book about calligraphy by the Renaissance illustrator Hoefnagel, had been made. Then, using the Warp Wagon (a spaceship that takes you around the globe), I visited Paris and Vienna to retrieve images that matched the clues. It was more work than I ever did for clothes money growing up.

EDUTAINMENT.

In a world where kids are spending a significant portion of their lives online, Whyville has pioneered mixing entertainment and education. The virtual world, founded in 1999 by CalTech biology professor James Bower, uses a wide variety of games to teach kids how to manage their money, hone their math and science skills, and even learn how to eat better. It's a kid's version of the popular Second Life cyberworld. A growing group of sponsors, including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Getty, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, and Toyota (TM), have created areas within the world where kids can play games to learn about ions or the undersea world, and even customize and arrange financing for a new Toyota Scion. This combination of fun and learning is exerting an undeniable appeal: Over the past year, the service has grown 41% and now has 1.7 million members.

With concerns rising over the risks posed to children and teens at social networking sites such as MySpace and Xanga, Whyville plays up the fact that it's a safer alternative for kids. From the beginning, the founders built safety controls into the site. When they register, children have to provide a parent's e-mail address so that the company can alert the parents that the child has signed up. Though everyone can chat on Whyville, members have to learn the chatting rules (ranging from no foul or suggestive language to no giving out personal information, such as phone numbers) before they are allowed to chat.

Whyville uses an artificial intelligence program to track down abuses and employees spot-check members' chat-log files at the end of each day. An infraction can lead to the loss of clams or duct tape put over your face for a few days. Repeated or egregious infractions lead to expulsion. If someone asks to meet a kid offline or is being lewd, kids can report this predatory behavior by using a virtual red-phone online.

Still, while this monitoring is stricter than other social networks, even Whyville doesn't claim to be bulletproof. Despite the exams and tutorials about online safe behavior, kids still give out their passwords and come up with new ways of spelling words to get around banned words. And there are no restrictions on adults joining the virtual world, though they're forbidden to pose as kids. But through the active monitoring, Whyville tries to make it enough of a hassle to harass kids that it's simply easier to go someplace else. "We're not 100% safe, but the metaphor we use is that when you have a nice car, you add all these safety features, from lowjacks to alarms," says Jay Goss, Whyville's chief operating officer.