Earlier this week, The Walt Disney Company launched a social networking site for the under 14 crowd. Disney Extreme Digital (Disney XD) is aimed at attracting those too young for sites like MySpace, has parental and content controls and limits users to posting content from Disney's own website. Pretty clever from a marketing point-of-view, but that's not why I'm posting about it.

(Bear with me for a minute and I promise I'll connect the dots) I was recently told that a private school in Maryland is banning students from having MySpace pages. That's right, banning. For this school (Unfortunately I don't know the name if it - this came up in casual conversation with one of the students), the debate if students should be able to log in to their MySpaces at school has long since sailed. In fact, it's not a debate. Students at this institution are suspended for having a MySpace page, even if they only use it at home and have parental or guardian permission.

(Linking the two thoughts) On the one had, we have corporations like Disney encouraging tweens and kids to jump on the social networking bandwagon and, on the other hand, we have educators preventing kids from doing so. 

I'm interested to hear thoughts on this because, to me (and assuming social networking will become more mainstream and common in the workplace as these kids grow up) it seems as though the corporation is fostering the development of skills these kids will need in the future and the school is hindering it.

If you're interested in Disney XD, check out this Globe and Mail article or go straight to the source: Disney Extreme Digital