Dublin - For a generation of young girls, it has become a digital heaven. Instead of dashing out to play after school or doing their homework, they leave the real world behind and log onto a virtual one.
Children have always loved playing make-believe, but now the Internet has created a new forum for their fantasies where they design their own identities on a new wave of websites that cater specifically for pre-teen girls.
With more than six million registered users, the world's largest such site is Stardoll.com, a cyber playground where children can dress up and play with hundreds of celebrity dolls designed in the form of graphic avatars (or characters).
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Such is the popularity of the site here, there are now 90 000 registered users in Ireland, 93 percent of them are girls with an average age of 14.
Users design their own 'Me Doll' But one of Britain's best known scientists, Susan Greenfield of the Royal Institution, has warned that internet-based virtual worlds may have a serious impact on real-life relationships and encourage users to abandon "the messy" intimacy of human relations for two-dimensional liaisons in the virtual world.
Stardoll introduces children to a world of fashion, fake tan and new friends. Users design their own "Me Doll" online identity which they create in their own likeness by choosing from a variety of virtual faces, lips, eye colours, skin tones and hair styles.
They then dress up their dolls in the latest teen fashion or dip into the wardrobe of their favourite celebrity, be she Mischa Barton or the Olsen twins. They can also chat with other members online and measure their popularity by the number of "friends" they accumulate on their page.
Users who register as paying members become "SuperStars" and get exclusive rights to dolls that haven't been released yet.
Targeting the commercial power of the tweenie
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