On the internet, geography does not mean a thing. Strangers meet with strangers and form communities based on common beliefs, values, ideas and interests across national and geographical borders. The term ‘online community’ suggests new forms of social interaction and groupings taking place in the network society. These new forms are primarily defined by cultural borders rather than by geographical ones.

However, Danish children and youth tend to form their online social communities on already existing networks in their physical proximity. Actually, in the Danish section of the Mediappro survey, only 8% of the responding children and young people say they talk with people they don’t know on MSN or chat.

Danish children often use online community tools to maintain relationships and exchange information with their local network of e.g. friends from school, their real life community that is. When and where is the next party? And who is the coolest super star at the moment?

The most popular portals for Danish children and young people to form their online communities are places where they can create their own networks of user profiles – public or private – with Web2 tools such as the chat portal Arto.dk. Moreover, the more playful portals offering open chat, games and avatar user profiles, such as Netstationen.dk and Habbbo.dk, also attract a large percentage of young Danish internet users.

Lars Kristiansen, Country Manager of Habbo.dk, says that the Danish Habbo-universe contains elements from both types of communities:

“There are, for instance, Habbo.dk users that form clans and clubs. Members are selected on the basis of a common interest such as the game Counter Strike. However, a recent user survey we conducted also indicated that many of the children using Habbo.dk know each other from the real world and create networks based on already existing relationships”

The Habbo hotels exist in 19 countries and have 50 million users world wide. The Danish portal hosts 112,000 users. At the beginning of October the Media Council for Children and Youth visited the information bus of Habbo.dk to chat with the users about web ethics.

Gry Hasselbalch, Danish Media Council for Children and Youth