Assignment 9: Webkinz-"Come in and Play!"

Webkinz is the brilliant combination of physical and online interaction with a stuffed animal. A person can buy one of these stuffed animals and then by entering a special code specific only to their toy they can create an online account to access to the “Webkinz World”. This world is a website where you adopt a virtual version of your stuffed animal and have countless ways of interacting with it. These interactions are essential to the belief that Webkinz can lead to Problematic Internet Use.

(A short video about
Webkinz and children's
addiction)

Problematic Internet Use is simply that problematic behavior is related to spending too much time online and this comes from excessive and compulsive use (Caplan). Excessive use is when a person’s time online exceeds the normal, usual, or planned amount and compulsive use is a person’s inability to control their online activity. In this scenario, spending too much time online is connected with the addictiveness of Webkinz because of its online environment. As previously stated this online environment is rich in interactions and one such interaction is taking care of your pet by monitoring its levels of happiness, health, and hunger. Not only do you need to make sure to regularly feed and exercise your pet, but to spend time and play games with it to make it happy.

Other activities that are extremely popular in the Webkinz world are the arcade games and tournaments, and the chat rooms. The arcade games have several incentives that can make them exceptionally addicting. First of all just by playing you can earn “Kinzcash”, the money of this world, which you can use later to buy items for your pet. You can also play to have the top score and have your pet’s picture and name displayed, which plays on the competitive nature of people and their desire for recognition. The chat rooms are a social side of Webkinz which allow users of similar interests to communicate with each other.

However, the truly addicting interactions within Webkinz are the daily and hourly activities. These activities make users want to be online more often so that they can play more games, make more money, and buy more things for their pets. Daily interactions are events that you can only perform once a day, like the two gambling arcade games, the “Wheel of Wow” and “Wishing Well 2” (pictured above) and the Care Award (pictured below). The Gem Hunt is one of the most popular once-a-day interactions. This game lets you go mining for a gem to sell, gem of the day for extra money, or to add to your collection. Webkinz also hosts hourly events, which allows a user to log in and perform a special task almost every hour of the day, from receiving a prize of 20 Kinzcash to playing the game “Balloon Darts”.

The addiction of Webkinz is also affecting reality by turning children and adults, especially parents, into shoppers. Like Beanie Babies, Webkinz is becoming a craze where it is often hard to find them available in stores, and this is leading people to use Ebay. The average price for a Webkinz on Ebay is $55, almost 5 times as much as store price. (This fun fact is from the video earlier linked) Ebay in itself is addictive and is turning parents into crazy spenders while trying to make their kids, and even themselves happy. Children are also turning into obsessive shoppers because in order to fully experience Webkinz they have to buy the playing cards, charms, and most importantly the Webkinz stuffed animals (and the pet of the month if they want that month’s special items). Not only are they spending real money, but they are learning to spend online by buying food, clothes, games, furniture, rooms, and toys among other choices. Webkinz is leading to problematic behavior and personalities problems.

Another of Caplan’s theories is the theory of Problematic Internet Use and Psychosocial Well-Being (2004). This theory states that individuals with psychosocial problems, like loneliness and depression, have negative perceptions about their social competence, which can lead to preferring online interactions because they perceive it to be less threatening and themselves to be more efficacious. This preference for online interaction can lead to excessive and compulsive use and create or worsen problems in a person’s life and can also reinforce psychosocial problems.

I feel that Caplan’s theories can apply at a certain level to Webkinz. First of all, not all webkinz users can be identified as depressed or lonely when creating an account, but there is no guarantee that Webkinz will not create these psychosocial issues over time. For example a girl and her group of friends might all buy Webkinz so that they can play with them together at lunch break and then again later online while at home. However the girl might become addicted to Webkinz and start isolating herself from her friends by focusing on the online interactions and this could lead to loneliness and depression. Then again it is likely that some children have a hard time making friends in real life and Webkinz offers them an opportunity for richer interactions with their plush toy companions, and thus they might never really learn how to interact socially and this could lead to reinforced loneliness and depression.

Internet affordances are another part of Caplan's model and help to explain why individuals may prefer online interactions. These affordances can be found within Webkinz in several different examples. The availability of chat rooms where you cannot display pictures of video and create the feeling that you are talking to someone your age who share similar interests (even though this might not be true) can lead to more intense and intimate self-disclosure. An individual on Webkinz also has greater control over their self-presentation and they can do this by selectively choosing their username, their type of pet, their pet's name, the clothes they dress their pet in, and how they decorate their rooms.

The internet also allows greater anonymity and this is also created in the Webkinz environment. Within this environment you create a username and know one knows who you are, how old you are, what you look like, what you really like to do, and this leads to people of all ages playing and becoming addicted. People of all ages can play because this anonymity helps lead to less perceived social risk; they can play without worry of being made fun of or considered childish. Lastly, less social responsibility is another internet affordance. Like many online spaces and Webkinz is no exception a person can develop a mentality of having less social responsibility. They don’t have to worry about being honest, nice, or polite and one reason that this is, is that they cannot visually see the reactions of others based on their behavior.

While Webkinz can be an enriching experience, one that can be had be all, one should monitor their behavior and time online carefully to avoid becoming a Webkinz addict.

For more about the addiction of Webkinz check out these links:

• http://www.news.com/Webkinz-I-fell-in-love-with-a-cyber-alley-cat/2100-1026_3-6182834.html
• http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/04/01/8403359/index.htm
• http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=3033380
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webkinz

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