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Second Life’s teen grid

I was browsing Cristiano Midnight’s Second Life snapshot site SnapZilla last night while we were recording SecondCast and came across the picture above, which is a screen grab of SL’s in-world user interface showing the map of the known Grid — only in this case it’s the Teen Grid, where users age 12-17 must start out before graduating to the 18-and-over Main Grid of SL proper. (If you’re under 12, you’re out of luck.) I post it here simply as an interesting insight into life on the Teen Grid, which doesn’t produce a lot of news, for various reasons (including issues of privacy). In fact, we’ve interviewed a teen Grid resident before on SecondCast, which made for an interesting show. Despite the fact that the size and population of the Teen Grid is much smaller (exact figures aren’t available from Linden Lab), the teens get up to much the same things the adults do. Although Barry Joseph of Global Kids, one of the few adults with access to a portion of the Teen Grid, has great insights into how life in the sister worlds differs in this episode of SecondCast.

For comparison, a shot of the map of the Main Grid after the jump.

As you’ll see, it’s already grown much bigger than the teens’ world. This isn’t even the whole thing, actually, just the mainland and what was once known as the “new continent” to the north. There are many more outlying islands, and what looks to be a new “new continent” off the map to the south. (I’ve turned off the markers that are on in the Teen Grid shot to give a better view of the landscape.) The gold circle is my virtual Second Life Herald office in the Louise sim.