Any responsible parent would care about the safety of their children when they connect to the internet. They might wonder what is it that their daughters find so compelling about these websites with dress-up and flash games, and most importantly, if this is a safe activity for them.

Safety when playing with Virtual Dolls

Well, parents shouldn't worry at all. Dress up games are as safe as internet video games can get. First of all, games are meant to focus your daughter's attention to a creative and fashion-like activity. This is already a very big difference from games that promote violence and sex. Also, it'll keep your daughter from chatting her free time away with strangers on other sites. In fact, if your daughter uses the dress up game to create an avatar, she will be able to use it as a profile picture for networking or other websites. This will help protect her privacy and increase her safety.

Where to Play Dress Up Games

There are already several websites that feature dress up games. As with everything on internet, they range from the simple ones with a few games, to full dedicated sites that feature virtual dolls of children's favorite characters and celebrities, such as Hanna Montana, Maddie from the Zack and Cody show, as well as their favorite cartoons, such as Dora the explorer and the Bratz dolls.

The dress up games resembles the paper dolls you or your spouse played when you were children: a doll in underwear that your little girl can dress up with a variety of pieces of clothing and accessories. Most sites don't require much other interaction that this, requiring only a couple of clicks and drags.

Dress Up Game Groups

The more specialized sites, however, offer a wider range of features. They do involve a bit of social interaction, such as rating dolls created by other members, fashion contests and forums where users can discuss dress up games related issues. Your child might even be able to create a profile and have an identity on these sites.

As in the case with any video game, TV show, and computer interaction that your child spends time with, some parental monitoring is required. And since you can't always be with your daughter when she interacts with other people, be it online, at school or elsewhere, the best strategy is to spend some quality time with her to teach her right from wrong and appropriate and SAFE social interaction. Fortunately, unlike social websites like Facebook, MySpace, Friendster or Hi5, websites that feature dress up games are smaller and the community that visits them shares a common hobby and a similar age and interests. They are also monitored more often and more closely, due to the younger age range of their users.

In order to give an additional layer of safety for your daughter, we recommend your child uses a dress up game creation of her own rather than a real picture of hers. In fact, you should NEVER EVER let your daughter upload a picture of hers anywhere online (and of course, you should never upload a picture of your daughter on the sites that YOU visit either). By using an avatar as her virtual image, she will be safer much safer than if she used a picture, as she would be identified as the latest anime character or High School Musical singer instead.