Over two-thirds of parents (68%)
have rules about the kinds of Web sites their teenaged children can
visit, as well as rules about what kinds of information their children
can share with people they talk to online, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Nearly seven in 10 parents of
online teens said they regulated how much time their children spent on
the Internet. eMarketer senior analyst Debra Aho Williamson said that
some of this time online involves visits to virtual worlds.

"As they mature into their teen years, [children] add social networking
to their online activities," Ms. Williamson said. "But they will also
seek out the real-time social interactions offered by virtual worlds."

Nearly two-thirds of parents check to see where their children are going on the Internet.

Pew found that parental monitoring and regulation of teen Internet
usage extended into these social online activities. Almost
three-quarters of parents could correctly identify whether or not their
online teen had ever created his or her own social networking profile.

For marketers, parental consent is not just an abstract concern.
When appealing to teens, getting permission and targeting appropriately
is not just sensible, but is sometimes legally required.

“It’s something we are extremely conscientious about,” said Glenn
Ginsburg, senior vice president of ad sales at Stardoll, in an
interview with eMarketer. “It’s about tying in ad serving to age
groups; it’s clearly labeling what is advertising and what is not. It’s
also working within industry standards linking off of the site.”

Parks Associates
has predicted that virtual world advertising in the United States will
increase tenfold to $150 million by 2012 from the 2006 level.

That spending could be cut, however, if parents deny permission for
teens to visit virtual worlds. And parental approval is not a given,
since some aspects of virtual worlds are still discomfiting for
parents.

Signing on for an account at BarbieGirls.com, for example, requires
that registrants select only a user name, password, age range (the
choices are 5 or under, 6-7, 8-9, 10-12, 13-15 and 16+) and a password
hint. Registrants must provide a parent’s e-mail address, which is used
to send an automated permission request. Once the parent approves, a
child can access the site.

However, there is no verification that the e-mail address truly
belongs to a parent (the e-mail simply asks the recipient to affirm
“that you are the parent of the child”). Nor is there any proof of age
required (eMarketer was able to register both as someone 16 and
older and ages 6 to 7).

Via eMarketer