Neopets: Is it Really Safe for Children?

Neopets.com is an online virtual pet game for both children and adults. It has over 1 billion pets and over 900 million users. With that many users and a mixture of adults and children can it really be safe for your child? Neopets.com claims to be a very safe environment for children, but how safe is it? What type of precautions are they using? How is Neopets protecting your children when you are unable to monitor their computer activities?

Well, I have been playing Neopets for over 5 years. I started in high school and I now an avid Neopets player! I have yet to see such a site with this many users as safe as Neopets. Neopets does go the extra mile to insure that your child is safe while on their site.

Verifying Age

From the very beginning of becoming a Neopets member, they insure the safety of your child. When signing up for Neopets, you child has to enter their birthday and their age. By doing this it helps to confirm your child's age. At the end of the process you also have to select an age group (ie. 4-13yrs, 16-18yrs, 18 and older). If your child is younger then 13 years old they will be required to have written permission from a parent or guardian mailed to Neopets in order to receive certain features of the game.

Neomail

After creating an account, if your child is 13 years or younger, neomail will not be allowed. Neopets will not allow any player 13 years old or younger, to use neomail. Neomail is just like e-mail except that it only goes to and from Neopets users. If your child isn't old enough the feature will be disabled for them and will notify anyone trying to message them that there message will not be delivered. In addition to this safety feature, Neopets will not allow ANY member to use any obscene, racial, or abusive language. Doing so will get your account frozen.

Message Boards

In the event that your child is 13 years old or younger, they will not be allowed to visit the message boards. Neopets have several message boards to include Neopets Site Help, Quest Help, Shop Ads and much more. If your child is too young they will not have access to any of the boards. Once again Neopets does not allow any obscene, racial, or abusive language. Doing so will get your account frozen.

Guilds

Neopets allows all users to create and join guilds created by users on the Neopets site. All guilds have to be approved and are monitored. While there are different message boards used for guilds they are not allowed to have any messages that are not related to Neopets. Anyone found posting about anything other then Neopets will be frozen.

Reporting Abuse

In the event that a member is violating any of the Neopets rules, Neopets will freeze that member's account. If for some reason Neopets does not catch a violation, you can be sure that it will be reported and resolved with in a matter of a few minutes after being put on the site. Every page, profile, message, guild, shop, and trade has a bright, bold link labeled "Report this page" or "Report this trade" When clicking on the link, the page in question is highlighted and has a list of the Neopets rules. You highlight the rule that has been broken and hit submit. It's only a matter of minutes before the site page is disabled. This again making sure you child is safe and lessening the chance that they will see something they shouldn't.

Confidentiality

No members' information is ever given out. Member profiles only show country, male or female, and the name that you choose to be displayed along with player stats. No age is ever shown for any member, which helps to make Neopets safe for children.

Neopets Rules

Among all the time put in to create Neopets it seems that the majority of its planning was put into child safety. Neopets prohibits many dangerous things to include:

~ Profane, obscene or mature language

~ Spamming of any sort

~ Advertising of any kind

~ Giving real names

~ Giving out addresses or phone numbers

~ Dating

~ Trying to find boyfriend/girlfriend

~ Asking for account information

~ Asking for names, address, or age

~ Posting Links to any site other than Neopets

~ Discussing any Religion

While these are only a few of the things that are prohibited, it gives you an idea of how hard it would be to obtain any information from or about your child. Neopets has taken extra precautions to insure that all members are safe while navigating through the Neopets site.