Xbox 360 Social Network Features are Age-Gated
Posted by Encroyable.com | Xbox 360 | Posted on November 6th, 2009
The upcoming social networking features built into the Xbox 360 dashboard aren’t for minors, but an update to change that is on the way, according to a blog post by Larry Hryb (a.k.a. Major Nelson). “As some of you might be aware, those under the age of 18 are not able to access Twitter, Facebook, and Last.fm in our public preview,” he wrote. “I want to let you know that this will remain the case when it launches to the world soon. We made this decision because as it stands now, parents aren’t able to use Family Settings to customize which of these applications their children can access. In order to offer an age-appropriate environment for everyone, we decided to turn off these applications to Gold members under the age of 18.” Of course, the actual applications aren’t age-gated, and they’re widely used on the Internet by people of all ages. But, the argument could be made that parents have control over home PC use, and without that control Microsoft felt it was safer to lock minors out altogether. Major Nelson does mention an update is in the works to let kids ages 13-17 use the features with parental approval, but no word on a release date yet. For now, those who aren’t legal adults will have to get their social networks somewhere else.
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Xbox 360 Social Network Features are Age-Gated
