http://commonsensible.net/2009/09/flame-me-burn-me-kill-me-just-don-eat.html

Unfortunately, I’d contend that the Teen Grid is about allaying fears rather than actually achieving anything. The Teen Grid would not be the first child protection policy that was directed to allaying fear rather than protecting children. I seriously doubt anything like the majority of Second teenagers are on the Teen Grid.

LL offers teenagers a choice. Go through a rigourous documentation procedure and live on an economically crippled and socially isolated grid, or register an anonymous account and have a blast. You would not have to be too much of a cynic to pick which option most teens would choose. I doubt that either payment info or age verification offer much of a challenge either.

Moreover, because LL goes through the motions of separating teenagers on their own grid, while actually admitting them to the adult grid in large numbers, LL can then excuse itself from further responsibility because they can point to their separate protected zone.

I’m all for a busier grid, and I’ve got my mute button handy….It will be a crazy move if it happens

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- Don’t make Zindra a place where those who want to establish or see adult (or rather mature, if you keep the old classification) content have to locate to – make it exactly the other way around! Make Zindra a PG only continent where those who don’t want to encounter anything mature or adult can have their home, business or educational institution. Wouldn’t the existance of such a continent look much better in the public eye than a giant red light district? Of course it would be necessary to make sure that the PG rules are followed by everyone and everywhere there.

Now my fantasy goes even further. Philip Rosedales dream is, to one fine day merge the Teen and the Main Grid. There are very good reasons to not do that – but also some very good reasons why todays hard separation is sub-optimal. The Teen grid has a suffering economy (no wonder with such a limited customer base), someone who transfers from TG to MG when he turns 18 loses all contacts to the friends he made over years in the TG, RL parents can’t enjoy SL together with their RL kids and so on. Now, if Zindra was made the place I would like it to be, it also could be a mixed area. TG residents (who would be marked as exactly that) could go there, have a business there offering their creations to a much broader market or visit educational institutions. Former TG residents who got to old for TG could meet their old friends there and stay in contact with them. RL parents could spend time together with their RL kids in Second Life.
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But knowing LL, *if* there will be a merge, it will be done in the most catastrophic way possible.

I’m just simply not convinced that formal education in its current forms, has any business in Second Life in the first place. Structurally, culturally and administratively, it’s a mismatch.

Moreover, when a cousin who asked me to help with registering for that grid discovered, (1) it is actually impossible, for Australians at least, to meet the teen grid documentation requirements (2) for most legal purposes, particularly the laws on age of consent, child pornography and abuse, the relevant age in Australia (and most other jurisdictions including many in the US) is 16 not 18.

I do not think the Adult Content/Zindra project has been executed very well, but if it leads to integration, even with some limits, of the Teen Grid, that would be a good thing from the point of view of education and expanding the user base.