IMVU - safe for pre-teens?

[Mr_Spock]

My kids have discovered this 3D avatar based chat service through an acquaintance who is not closely supervised. My girls are 10 & 11. The first thing I heard of it was when the oldest came to tell us that "someone is dressed "inappropriately" on IMVU". I was like "what? what do you mean "inappropriate"?" Apparently they can have their little 3D animated avatars dress pretty sleazily with some buttocks hanging out of their clothes :eyes: Then they were saying "this person says their gay - not that there's anything wrong with that" (no Seinfeld jokes please). OK, they are definitely taught that there is no issue with a persons sexuality, but how many 11 year olds openly state that they are gay? I didn't think so either. Our first reaction to this site is that even though the avatar images look like the animated folks they see on television, there seems to be little or no control or supervision of the actions of those behind the animated "figure" - thus this appears to be a potentially dangerous site for them. Here is their "about" page for those unfamiliar http://www.imvu.com/catalog/web_info.php?section=Info&topic=aboutus Also highlight some of the avatar names on the scrolling bar on the homepage :evilfrown:

Anybody see any reason why we should not pull the plug on this immediately?

[sakabatou]

1. It also clogs your ram

Not good for computers.

[Mr_Spock]

2. Good

Perhaps it'll not run well for them if (when) they try to sneak on as their computer sucks and is easy to slow down to a crawl.