There are plenty of online virtual worlds that your children may be visiting, with bizarre names including Millsberry, Kaneva, vSide, Entropia, HiPiHi, Ogoglio City, Habbo, Club Penguin, There.com and MTVs worlds. Many of them use human-like avatars (2D and 3D characters) and allow the player to make choices about their personality, clothing, type of environment and much more.

In many worlds where the accent is strongly on teen and/or pre-teen members, the owners take great care to ensure that content and interactions remain very age-appropriate.

Most of these worlds place visitors safely inside a preconceived environment where they can interact with others and even buy clothes, visit the school cafeteria (even avatars need food to survive!) and borrow school books (and pay fines with virtual money if theyre returned late!).

These worlds are moderated 24 hours a day, every day, by professional moderators. The moderators are fully trained and players can ask them for help at any time. Conversations are logged and can be monitored at any time without warning, with any questionable behaviour reported to the police.

Some worlds even put every conversation through filters before they appear on the screen, to eliminate swearing, racist and sexist terms and other words unsuitable for children. The filters also remove email addresses and phone numbers so that they cant be accidentally or deliberately given out.

In addition, all of these worlds work hard to educate members about being safe online. Many worlds produce regular newsletters containing articles on safety, along with prominently displayed safety information.