The conversation about kids and screen time tends to go in one direction pretty quickly — how do we limit it? Which is a fair question. But there’s a different question worth sitting with first: what are kids actually doing when they’re in there?

Because “playing online” covers a lot of ground. A child competing alone against an algorithm is having a very different experience from a child navigating a shared space with other kids, figuring out how to collaborate, how to handle conflict, how to belong somewhere. One of those can genuinely support how a kid develops socially. The other mostly just passes time.

Can online games actually help kids build real social skills?

Yes — but the game has to be designed with that in mind.

The social skills that matter most at this age — reading the room, thinking about how others feel, learning to disagree without blowing things up — all develop through repeated practice in low-stakes situations. A well-designed virtual world gives kids hundreds of those small moments in a space where the consequences of getting it wrong are manageable.

What you want to see: shared activities that require cooperation, public spaces where kids have to interact with strangers, and community systems that reward kindness rather than just performance. That combination creates real social texture, not just the appearance of it.

What does healthy social behaviour actually look like in an online community for kids?

It looks a lot like what you’d hope to see on a school playground — and it shows up in small, specific ways.

On Imagine Island, kids write into the in-game newspaper with ideas, questions, and feedback. One player wrote in to suggest a team treasure hunt event, thinking through the group mechanics in detail — maps, time limits, what prizes should go inside the chest. Another organized a competitive group around one of the mini-games and proposed a full leaderboard system with a fair submission process, complete with a “thank you for your time” signed off with triple Ys. These aren’t just game ideas. They’re kids practicing how to make a case, consider other people, and contribute to something bigger than themselves.

And then there’s this: one player wrote in simply to remind everyone to talk to people who seem lonely, because you never know how their day is going. Nobody asked them to write that. They just did.

That’s what a healthy online community looks like for kids under 13. Not perfectly behaved — but oriented toward each other.

Should parents worry that online friendships are replacing real ones?

It’s a reasonable thing to wonder, and worth watching. But the relationship isn’t usually that straightforward.

For a lot of kids, especially those who are shy, newer to a school, or just find face-to-face interaction exhausting, a virtual world can actually be a place where they practise connecting before they do it in person. The social muscles are the same ones. Reading tone, managing disappointment, deciding whether to speak up or let something go — those transfer.

The version to watch for is a child retreating into online spaces specifically to avoid the harder work of in-person relationships. That’s a different pattern, and it usually shows up in other ways too — not wanting to do things they used to enjoy, pulling away from family, that kind of thing. The game itself rarely causes it.

What a good virtual world should do is leave a kid feeling more connected, not less. That sounds obvious until you realize how many games are designed purely around individual performance — leaderboards, solo achievement, competition. A shared world where kids are building things together, exploring Keystone Island, running into each other at the Job Board — that’s a different design philosophy, and it produces a different experience.

One player wrote into the newspaper to say they enjoy experiencing things in the game that they might do when they’re older — “full grown, like 27.” That line has stayed with me. Kids are using these spaces to rehearse. To try on versions of themselves. To figure out who they want to be around and how they want to be treated.

That’s not nothing. That’s actually kind of what childhood is for.