At first I would only allow her to play on weekends, after her homework was done. Since Animal Jam came into our lives, my youngest asks every day to play. So we started locking the desktop computer at night. In the morning, I would find the lid closed when we had left it open. She had a pact with her older sister to wake each other up to play at night. Then once we discovered this and locked the tablets when not in use, she started waking up before dawn to play Animal Jam on our desktop computer. She began rising from her upstairs bed after my husband and I went downstairs (bedtime is 8:30 pm), to search for our tablet Playbooks in our bedroom to play Animal Jam into the night. A crowd with limited reasoning abilities, and, I daresay, little control over their impulses. The target, according the aforementioned YouTube presentation, is the under 10 crowd. In my household, I noted some interesting addictive behaviours particularly in my eight year old. News reports:Īlthough pathological video gaming appears to share a number of characteristics with other addictive behaviors, such as pathological gambling, the researchers noted that "pathological gaming" is not yet an established psychological disorder. I love this study so much, I am going to quote big chunks from this article, "Are MMORPGs 'addictive?'" written by Dave Munger in June 2008, since I'm afraid the link will no longer work in the future: A study of 100 university students showed disturbing data. What makes Animal Jam "unsafe" is that is is addictive. While I was not at home, they had their first Animal Jam session and then they were hooked.Īnimal Jam is Virtual Cocaine for the Under 10 Crowd I was leery of letting our kids play any video games as I consider them a waste of time when they could be spending their hours reading, doing creative activities, or physical activities instead. Parents consider it safe because it is a National Geographic creation and parents can monitor players' activities through the parent dashboard. I do not want my child interacting with sweaty naked fat old men masquerading as little innocent kids. When my kids first asked to play Animal Jam, I researched whether Animal Jam was safe. The reason why Animal Jam is successful is twofold. Yes, it was doing something "right." Animal Jam is an MMORPG: a "massively multiplayer online role playing game." Sure, the kids are playing with cute animal avatars instead of with overmuscular armoured men and women typical of other role playing games, but it is an MMORPG nonetheless. He boasted that the average Animal Jam user spends 75 minutes per session, saying this was evidence that his website was doing something right. I watched a YouTube presentation by one of the companies profiting from this phenomenon-Clark Stacey, CEO of Smart Bomb Interactive, called "Animal Jam: Why Chocolate Covered Broccoli Sucks But Zucchini Bread Doesn't." In it, he explained the success of Animal Jam. Currently Animal Jam boasts SIX MILLION players, and counting. The child explores around the Animal Jam world taking part in games with players from all over the world. She became obsessed with acquiring and possessing, and trading items with other players. Now, this may be the true intention, but upon observing my child play, she did not learn much if anything except materialism. Along the way your child is supposed to learn facts. In it were advertisements for "Animal Jam," an online game with multiple stranger players, simple games like tic tac toe with rewards of jewellery, hats, clothing for your avatar, an animal. We subscribed to National Geographic for Kids magazine to raise funds to build our school playground. What is Animal Jam and How We Were Sucked Into It
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