I am a medical professional and my daughter was into studying bugs. She knew everything there was to know about bugs. Had she not been introduced to this addictive crap on the net, she might be an entomologist.

So if I get the reasoning here, is, Crack is OK, it is just that some people can't keep their lives in order. It is OK for 'adult' sites that exploit children to be on the net, because, it is just the sickos that get into it who ruin their own lives...oh, and the lives of innocent kids?

It is hard to believe that cartoon characters could be addicting. TV, chat rooms, casinos, booze, food, exercise you name it....do we ban it all? We can't do that.

No autisitic spectrum person is better off for living in a virtual world. Aspergers kids, especially, can relate to eachother, real world, real time. They can become experts at many things if they don't get hooked on these ethereal characters that drain their budgets.

I didn't allow my kid on the net, so I am irate that others did. Eventually she would have found it as an adult, but I was hoping before that we could help her use her incredible brain for the betterment of her life and humanity. I would rather hear every detail about every genre of dragonfly than hear one word about some 'avatar'.

She will likely end up dead or in jail trying to get money to support this habit. She has lied, stolen, and manipulated to get on the net and get access. It isn't just this website, it is others like it, you can feed your 'pet' or 'build a new you' whatever.

Unlike a gambler, or alchoholic, she has a brain that will not yield to treatment programs. Promoting living in a fantasy world is not much different than leaving a schizophrenic untreated. Sorry I disagree with the premise that lives are improved by living virtually instead of living fully. We should concentrate our efforts on linking Aspergers individuals together as real people, and concentrate on assistive technology to free the more severe cases of autism of their blocks to communication.

My motto. Get real.