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Tweens and Reproductive Health in Virtual Worlds08.21.08 |
Under the leadership of Douglas Thomas, Associate Professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Yasmin Kafai, Professor of Learning Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, Tweens and Reproductive Health in Virtual Worlds is an effort to gain insights on how tweens, an understudied but growing group of online players, approach the issues of sexuality within a virtual world. This project is made possible with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
This study will examine the sexual content and related behaviors in tween conversations in a virtual world called Whyville.net, which is populated by over 2 million registered players between ages 10-16 – thus a prime audience for our developmental topic. Access to Whyville is free and players can spend time participating in science activities, creating their own avatars and socializing with others through multi-player games, chat spaces, newspaper articles, email, trading (Kafai & Giang, 2008).