Neopets (http://www.neopets.com)

I have been playing neopets for the past three years and honestly, it is one of the best websites I have ever been on. You can make friends, chat, customize your pet/s, play learning games, set goals, and much more. On Neopets, I have made friends with people of many ages, across the WORLD. Safety is not a concern on this website, for there are message board monitors, as well as blocks; so you can't use curse words or sexual content. I have had a blast making new friends, it is a place to escape from the busy, everyday, real world...and relax to something cheerful, and wonderful. Overall, I believe Neopets is the perfect site for almost everyone.

I'm only 12, but I've been playing neopets nearly since it came out, so I started playing it when I was about 5 or 6. Neopets is a great site and teaches kids to care for pets while also teaching them money smarts (the virtual money can be spent wisely so you can become rich with great pets or you can spend it on random junk and become broke). Although you can buy real-life items from the site, you need a credit card and few little kids have their parent's credit card number memorized, so I really isn't a huge issue. Although some of the neopets games have gambling, the gambling ones like the slot machines and keno can only be played if your account says your age is over 18 (and mine does; my sister created it a while back and then gave it to me). I don't know if there is an age restriction on the stock market, but I sure didn't understand it when I was younger, so I pretty much kept away from buying and selling stocks. I doubt many little kids would be interested in it anyways. I say this website has some educational purposes. When I was in third grade, my class would play maths nightmare on the smartboard (before it became updated and hard to click on the bubbles) to study for our mad-minutes (1 minute to complete 100 basic math problems). In school last year (5th grade), my applied tech teacher suggested the game typing terror on there to help with our typing before our test. My mom and I also enjoy playing the word games together like word pyramid, spell or starve, and word poker (the last two are fine for kids, mind you). Neopets, clothing wise, is FINE for children; the worst item they have is 'My sister's frilly skirt', given out by the advent calendar in I believe y8 or so. I've heard countless arguments over that item, but I feel it's fine as long as you don't have a bad mind. Chatting is fairly safe; there are a lot fewer spammers than there use to be, mainly because viacom has decided to start issueing IP bans more often. Also, if you try to curse or post bad things, the neopets filter now automatically blocks the post and doesn't let it go through. Although you can post off-site links, the link is taken down a few seconds afterward and you get a warning sent to you from TNT. Yes, you can talk to anyone from anywhere in the world, but basically any chat thing you can do that. TNT has moderaters swarming the boards 24/7. Although some things on neopets are hard to figure out, most people start to understand them not long after starting. There are great, kid-friendly guides all over the internet, too (on-site and off) and it's fun if you have friends that play too so you can find out stuff together. Just the other day, I showed one of my best friends who's been playing neopets for a few months how to earn 30k from just playing a few easy games and also how to use the shop wizard to find low prices on food. I think this game is good for anyone, whether they are 6 or 60. I've found many adults who play neopets (they have their own guilds that they create and create their own boards to find other adults usually) and I know a few little kids in real-life that play neopets. I would suggest this game to anyone who wants a break from real-life and a chance to care for a pet and play games.

I've been playing Neopets for six years and I have had a great time, until one night when I was nine, I received a neomail. I know that kids under the age of thirteen can't send or receive neomails unless from the Neopet staff, but I got my mom to sign this paper that allowed me to send neomails and other thirteen year old privliges. Anyways, I got this neomail from a person I didn't know asking me to kiss him and all these other sexual things. I got scared so I got my mom in the room and she kind of talked to the guy and finally she blocked him. A report form was sent to the Neopets staff and a couple days later, my Neopets account got frozen, although my mom didn't say anything bad. So we tried to un-freeze my account but after a while, we gave up. I made a new account and I'm still playing to the day, although I suggest not allowing kids under the age of thirteen (even if you trust and supervise them) to be allowed to have thirteen-year-old privliges. Neopets is still a great way to learn to take care of a pet, and it does teach some responsibility. But there is some gambling involved, and scams for Neopet paint brushes (that allow people to paint their pet a different colors) and other information (like bank account numbers, etc.) are almost everywhere. Even off of Neopets! The message boards are kind of safe, although there is still some cursing that gets around the servers. There are still some nice boards, but kids should be aware. I think Neopets is a great place for some tweens and teens, but definitely not any age below that without major supervision.

This is one of the best online games you can play, I've been playing this game for 6 years and i have never seen 1 thing that would be any harm to a kid, there are some adds for products related to it but they gotta keep the game going somehow, but other then that it's an amazing site.

My son, who is 5 years old, has an account and so do his friends. On this site, not only do they learn how to take care of a pet,but they learn about the value of money. They can have a bank account and make deposits, withdrawls, and collect interest.

I've been both a member and a parent of a member of this site and have to say, if you're over the age of 16 it's a great place to have fun, but if you're under the age of 16 it's not a great place to be if you use the message boards. I've dealt with bullying on a massive scale here, but it was fine as I'm an adult. My daughter; however, was destroyed by users on the message boards and the security team (the neopets team) did nothing to protect her and everything to protect the users who were attacking her and bullying her. These people all had aged accounts and seemed to be treated better than the newer members are. I tried speaking to support personnel (Charlotte) and was told that my daughter was at fault as she didn't ignore the taunts and harassment. I don't recommend this site to anyone who has kids under the age of 16.

kind of addicting...

I have been playing on this site since I was about 8 years old and still love it. It has taught me how to manage my money and to spend it wisely, allowing me to currently have millions in my bank account on the site. It will teach people to do the same thing. There is a lot of advertisements, and some games are sponsored by different companies like: Kraft and Capri Sun. I strongly recommend this site for its fun games and all around friendly atmosphere.

There are a few minor issues with Neopets. For one thing, they are a LOT of negative messages going around something called the "Neoboards", a place where "Neopians" or, Neopets users, can compare gaming scores, get help, etc. Some of the critisizm is unnessacary and very mean. There is a tiny bit of curse words, but they have blocked it very nicely and the cuss words are only in the usernames, and are very rare. There are a million ads on the pages around Neopets that may not be suitable for some kids. This site is great because it gives kids a great deal of information on money, pets, and deovtion to a goal. Neopets has a ton of computer coding and graphics that older kids would enjoy learning about, and it's really fun to explore and show off your computer capabilities on this site. There are a few dumb glitches such as mistaking words for bad words, etc.