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Teen Grid: A sad state of affairs

Moo Money
Updated ·5 min read

I logged into the Teen Grid this Saturday to attend a Machinima tools presentation by HVX Silverstar. Before I could teleport to Eye4You, I ran into a group of teens gathered on Global Kids island. Alex Harbinger was holding his monthly intern meeting, with this one being about the state of the Teen Grid.

Since this topic concerned me, I decided to stick around and weigh in. What I learned was downright depressing. Most of the teens were very unhappy with their current experience on TG. I gathered some of their experiences, including pictures, to share with the Massively readers. I hope this helps you get an accurate description of what they're facing over there.

The first part of the event involved a human barometer, with three choices. For each statement, you would choose from Agree, Not Sure, or Disagree. Some of the results were surprising. The second part involved an informal discussion where they could sound off about anything.

Continue after the jump to see the questions and highlights from the event ...




Statement 1: The Teen Grid is exactly where it should be.

  • The economy could be better.

  • Population is so small that everyone is up in your drama.

  • Teens shouldn't be exposed so much to adults because they're too quick to trust.

  • Can't buy mainland.

  • Educational islands coming in and treating teens like test subjects.

  • Adults are coming in easier than teens, many of whom can't sign up because they don't have cell phones from carrier list.

  • Grid is so small that people shop in same areas, not allowing new designers to make money.

  • People are scared to invest, which hurts their economy.

  • Adults coming into TG should pay higher prices for land to subsidize it for teens.


Statement 2: Fixing sign-ups and premium should be Linden Lab's top priority over anything else.

  • They should fix the lag first.

  • Because signups are nerfed, TG can't grow their population and economy.

  • There should be a 100% TG team at LL. Teens are the future MG customers, and they have trust issues with the brand already.

  • SL TG has a bad reputation among foreign teens in schools because they are unable to join.

  • LL should work to improve the image of SL so that more people will join.


Statement 3: The Teen Grid has become isolated from the Main Grid; with less and less Linden help and supervision.

  • One person messaged three Lindens and none replied back.

  • Blue and Teeple are the only two Lindens that seem to care.

  • We don't make as much money for them as MG does, so we're not as important.

  • The only two Lindens that seem to log in are Blue and Spike, and they do it sparsely at best.

  • The TSL website hasn't been updated in two years.

  • When the entire grid was smaller, the Lindens used to like coming over to hang out with the teens, but now they act like it's a chore and get defensive about it.

  • You used to just be able to randomly bump into Lindens while flying around, but now they only come in to fix things.

  • What happened to the community manager for TG that they were looking to hire for?

  • If they spent more time on TG, they'd lose profit. Then there would be no grids.

  • There should be two Lindens dedicated to TG affairs.


Statement 4: Overall, The Teen Grid's performance has INCREASED recently.

  • Performance is worse than before.

  • Since teens haven't been relying on LL, they've been improving the quality of TG themselves.

  • They've become better at building and just about everything on their own.

  • Too many islands are closed off to the teens.

  • There is less newbie behavior.

The overall consensus was "The mainstream thoughts seemed to have been that the Teen Grid could be better, but has had a recent uptrend. However, this is not due to Lindens, but rather to the hard work of Teen residents. Linden Lab is slacking, and should fix Teen Grid problems, as well as provide better support."


Points of their informal discussion:

  • TG hasn't gone anywhere lately. While it has evolved and grown, it's become stale. Some sims are little more than prim wastelands.

  • Furries cause a lot of problems on TG.

  • Some of TG's more prominent members are leaving. LL should take note, especially to those paying large amounts of tier.

  • Why aren't there islands on TG for promotions like CSI?

  • The two grids should merge.

  • Mozilla wouldn't be responsible for the porn that they might look at in Firefox, so why should Linden Lab be responsible for them on the Main Grid?

  • Linden Lab is supposedly working on an "all ages area".

  • There is no difference between the rules for PG sims on either grid. There should be shared PG areas.

  • They go through sex education in school, so they should be mature enough to avoid adult areas.

  • It's easier to create an MG account than a TG account.

  • If the economy collapses on MG, it affects the finances of TG.

  • Economy on TG should be separate from MG.

  • Stipend removal cripped the TG economy. It was only put in place to reduce inflation on MG.

In my opinion, the Teen Grid is in sad shape. Teens shouldn't have these feelings of abandon, but they're left with no choice. They can barely get the help that they need, aren't visited by the Lindens that they adore, and they're used as cheap labor by many educational institutes.

If Linden Lab isn't going to completely overhaul TG, they should just merge it. As broken as the Main Grid is, it's not even one quarter as bad as TG. I'm totally heartbroken whenever I visit.

I'd like to give thanks to many of the teens that participated in this discussion. Lucky Figtree, Storm Basiat, Alex Harbinger, and Anna Normandy were particularly helpful!