UK - Commercials cause concern in the virtual Barbie world

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In the US and elsewhere, public discussion of virtual worlds has been dominated by potential threats to children from sexual predators and from violent images in online games. The media and toy companies have responded with an emphasis on site safety, with limits on what messages a user's avatar can send. But Sara Grimes, a communications professor at Simon Fraser University in Canada, says there has been very little attention paid to the commercialisation and marketing elements of digital play, including the collection of data that can be used for advertising linked to online behaviour. "It is easy to get distracted from these issues . . . The sites also play on that by promoting themselves as safe havens and tapping into parental concerns," she says.