Channeling Something Positive From 'Bad Avatars'

I did a taped interview earlier this week for The CBS Early Show on "avatars behaving badly" — it's supposed to air on Monday morning (and I might do a live interview at 5 a.m.) but of course, it might get bumped, too (it was supposed to air Thursday and today so far…). Anyhow, one of the questions focused on how teens will hack into each others' accounts, steal virtual stuff, or find other ways to "cheat" in virtual worlds. What was interesting to me is the gray area of this being "wrong" yet the ingenuity and skill kids/teens demonstrate by being able to do this in the first place. It reminded me of the school administrators I've met who tell me about how their kids can get around filters, set up proxies, etc. in order to check their MySpace accounts from school. Granted, hacking an account and stealing someones virtual furniture is different from hacking through blocks and filters to check your MySpace messages. One actually hurts another person, the other, breaks a rule but doesn't directly hurt another person. Both show how for some kids who have grown up using this technology from an early age, figuring out ways to get what they want digitally, seems almost intuitive.

To me it seems like the perfect opportunity to reward teens' skills and ingenuity yet bring in the ethical issues and attempt to channel the desire to game the system either to cheat or steal or "just because I can" into something positive. It also made me think of this book as a positive resource for these teens — O'Reilly's Hacker Teen.

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