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Protecting Children In Virtual Worlds Without Undermining Their Economic, Educational, And Social Benefits, Robert Bloomfield, Benjamin Duranske

Washington and Lee Law Review

Advances in virtual world technology pose risks for the safety and welfare of children. Those advances also alter the interpretations of key terms in applicable Laws. For example, in the Miller test for obscenity, virtual worlds constitute places, rather than "works," and may even constitute local communities from which standards are drawn. Additionally, technological advances promise to make virtual worlds places of such significant social benefit that regulators must take care to protect them, even as they protect children who engage with them.

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Developmental Implications Of Children's Virtual Worlds, Kaveri Subrahmanyam

Washington and Lee Law Review

As virtual worlds for children increase in popularity, it is important to examine their developmental implications. Given the limited research on this question, we use extant social science research on youth and digital media to understand how children 's participation in virtual worlds might mediate their development. We identify four different pathways by which new media can potentially mediate development. Then we review relevant research on video games, which, like virtual worlds, contain three-dimensional online fantasy worlds; we also review research on online communication forums, which are like virtual worlds in that they allow users to create online selves and …

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