What You Need to Know About WeeMees (or Weeme)

WeeMees are customizable avatars that can be used on MySpace, Facebook, Blogger, AIM, Skype, and even on mobile phones. The WeeWorld sites also has games, greeting cards, and wearable merchandise featuring your unique WeeMee.

If you have young kids, especially girls around 6-7, this might be one site they are trying to access on the home computer. It’s fun to pick an avatar and dress it up, a bit like a virtual Barbie, or in this case more like a dressable troll, since a WeeMee is a squat little creature with only a vague resemblance to a human being. At the same time, and perhaps not obvious to the parent, WeeWorld is a social networking site that asks visitors to sign up and “keep in touch with friends and make new ones.”

The site is self contained, and includes warnings that no data should be given by kids younger than 13. However, there is no way for weeworld to verify the age requirement so it’s up to parents to disable the site or supervise their kids closely while in WeeWorld. Unfortunately, if you have given access to WeeWorld, in Safari, for example, you can’t disable the social networking portion of the site. We wish WeeWorld would provide an area for the under 13 set to play with the avatars while not allowing connection to the community features of the site.

Our recommendation would be to allow young kids to play with the WeeWorld avatars in an area where supervision is easy while specifically telling them that providing personal information is against the rules.

- Paul Banas
Founder/Editor