'Neopets addiction' ok for your kid?

Before one even looks at Neopets.com's numbers it's clearly a phenomenon: designed by a young British couple who love animals, art, and writing software code, marketed by an American who based its business model on the teachings of Scientology and trademarked the phrase "immersive advertising," and acquired by Viacom last June for $160 million. Then there are those user numbers, 25 million members wordwide, 80% of them under 18 and 20% under 13, interacting and caring for their neopets in 10 languages - "the stuff of marketers' dreams," as Wired magazine put it in a thorough take-out on planet Neopets. But the site is not without its critics, because "half a million of its users are under age 8," and people that age can't mentally fend off persuasive sales messages, Wired reports, much less distinguish between playing a game and immersive advertising (as in the "'Lucky Charms: Shooting Stars!' game, in which kids navigate a series of marshmallow treats" of breakfast cereal fame), even when it says "this page contains paid advertisements" at the bottom of the page. There is profanity screening, according to Wired, and "Neopets bars kids under 13 from using the messaging features … but with no credit card numbers to verify identity, nothing prevents an 8-year-old from registering as an 18-year-old to post instant messages. And although they can't select a username like Phuckhead, because it's blocked, they could choose Childmolester - if it weren't already taken." For more, see "Beware chat on Neopets" from a mom/NFN reader and "Advergames & the nag factor."