Gaia Online and inappropriate PMs

[Ann-Marita]

Does anyone know anything about Gaia Online? It's a website where teens can create an avatar, play games and interact.

DD has received some inappropriate PMs on Gaia, one with a picture of the guy's penis! DD deleted the picture and de-friended him. But she did also respond in a sexual manner to someone else's PM.

She also admitted that she gave out our phone number, and that she talked to the guy on the phone. (Aparently the phone calls happened some months ago.)

This is scary.

Help?

She has been told to never ever give out personal information. I'm reinforcing that with her. But it's hard to believe that she didn't "get it" when I told her this earlier.

[sugarrush]

omg that's disgusting! My friend recommended Fantage.com to me- it's seems so safe.. and parents get to customize the chat options

[love_r4ks]

IMO Gaia is HORRIBLE!! After going on gaia myself and REALLY seeing what was on there (we're talking hours and hours I spent browsing that site) my 13 year old DD was banned from ever going there again! Japanese cartoon porn all over that place. Honestly, the drawings were absolutely disgusting and many were even worse than real pornographic pictures. (IMO) Look up pokemon porn and you'll see what I'm talking about. Naked pics of women that were posted by other people. Usernames such as "letmerapeyourchildren", "moe-lester" "cumonme" "onehornyguy" etc.. People talking about watching a friend get raped last weekend, drugs, sex, etc.. I emailed quite a few times about the porn and had people banned, but they just get a new username quite easily and start up with their trash again! Horrible, horrible site!

Andrea

[potatofairy]

not a good site for kids.
(but i love playing zomg)

[mama2myangels07]

Originally Posted by Ann-Marita

Does anyone know anything about Gaia Online? It's a website where teens can create an avatar, play games and interact.

DD has received some inappropriate PMs on Gaia, one with a picture of the guy's penis! DD deleted the picture and de-friended him. But she did also respond in a sexual manner to someone else's PM.

She also admitted that she gave out our phone number, and that she talked to the guy on the phone. (Aparently the phone calls happened some months ago.)

This is scary.

Help?

She has been told to never ever give out personal information. I'm reinforcing that with her. But it's hard to believe that she didn't "get it" when I told her this earlier.

Not the greatest site considering not much is modded unless it's in a public area, but the pm can be reported.

[JessicaS]

You might look at runescape, it is censored and there are a lot of options to make things a bit better for kids

Children under thirteen cannot chat at all, they have to use a preset list of options to choose for chatting.

Even if you do use your birthday instead or something it is more heavily moderated.

[NettleTea]

I hang out on that site from time to time. Some of the games are cool and so are the different styles of clothing.
I tend to avoid the forums as they are really lame. Definitely not a safe site for younger kids. Barely okay for teenagers. Honestly, my 17 yr old sister is on there all the time and I sometimes feel uncomfortable with her being there. But whatevs.

[mammal_mama]

Okay, now I understand why I found the discussion forums so lacking in depth. I didn't hang around enough to see any of the really horrid stuff mentioned here -- just found the discussions rather surfacey and one-line.

I got all into the concept of Gaia after reading some about it online -- but I'm 46 and it looks like most others who are into it are way young. I couldn't find any discussions about the actual philosophy! I did see some about sexlives but didn't read enough to see anything too shocking...just not what I was joining to learn about, since I've already been having sex for some time, LOL.