...to be upset by Runescape after 1 day of DS using it?

[Monkeybird]

Against my better judgement (or not?) I let my DS (9) play on Runescape. His mates (one a bit older, 13 I think) had been badgering him to for weeks and we resisted. But caved in and within 24 hours, all kinds of stuff has upset me and I need to know if I'm being a paranoid technophobe or just a reasonably anxious parent...

1. His friend, who he chatted to online, within the game, used my son's real name. OK I know the 'friends' chat is private, but I didn't know this before I went all through the guidelines and my son didn't seem very clear on it. More to the point, I'm pissed off that his friend did it cos I think it is a BAD habit to have...

This after a long, long chat about all the things you need to think about while playing interactive stuff online, including using and giving out personal info...

1. His friend's little brother, who is even younger than my DS, is using his real name within his online username. All this makes me think their parents are really a bit slack about their own monitoring of the game...

1. Then, when I sat down with him to play alongside, since this is what we've agreed to do periodically, within 10 secs someone was on there asking 'anyone go to ** school?' and then 'anyone wanna be friends?'. OK this was to players in general and not my son. And who knows, it might well have been another kid. But it looked like a classic attempt at phishing/grooming to me and I got really upset by it.

In a way, the latter was probably a good thing since my son was completely nonchalant about the potential risks but then when he saw me upset and I explained that what had just happened might well have been like a complete stranger, perhaps a 50 year old man up to no good, sitting in the living room asking to play with him, yet because he couldn't see him, how could my son tell?

I immediately switched off the public chat option. I had no idea until this happened, cos my son didn't tell me and it wasn't clear in the many, many guidelines, that you could indeed play the demo game without this switched on.

So perhaps some naivety on my part.

But am I BU to be upset? And to be pissed off with other people's parents for not encouraging their own children to play responsibly?

You are not being unreasonable. It's a sad world welive in and kids have to be aware if they want to go onto these things. Good for you to sit down with him and explain everything - tell him to tell his friends - if they're parents can't be bothered or simply don't know then someone needs to tell them.

I thought players had to be 12 or over to play on Runescape?

Brothel, they are. The website says something like 'we recognise that children under 12 do not have the ability to know when online interactions can go wrong or be dangerous. If children under 12 wish to play, we suggest parents open an account and play alongside them. In fact we'd encourage this as a way of families playing together...'

Or somesuch.

This is what we were doing, though if I'm honest not all the time.

You could well argue that I knew the risks. I guess I was just shocked that apparent risky stuff should come up so soon and so obviously.

And this is not in my defence at all (very weak argument) but many many many under-12s are playing this game and others like it (Dragon Fable for example). I guess pester power won in the end.

i agree with you that the friends parents seem like they don't monitor their childrens gaming. i didn't know that you could turn off public chat however so will have to make sure my ds does that. he also had someone ask that when he was on there..we told him that in that situation it's best to not talk to that person and we explained why. we monitor his usage very strictly but then i am a very (maybe over)protective mum unfortunately this game does state it's for over 13s for a reason. i knew this and took this into consideration when i agreed to let my ds play. i don't think yabu though...especially since the game doesn't have moderators either.

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argh! 5, Cod? How do your nerves stand it.

[does indeed seem like a pile of boring shite but I guess he'd say same about MN)