Jimmy Simpson for BI
When I was 9 and first ventured online in 2005, the internet was my playhouse. Every evening after school, I would jump into my online cartoon world where I could choose between dozens of websites made for kids my age. At Club Penguin, I adopted colorful pets called puffles and purchased kitsch furniture for my virtual igloo. In the Neopets haven of Neopia, I visited the money tree to collect items others had discarded. On Pony Island, I dressed up my herd of colorful horses (despite my aversion to the animal, I found the game irresistibly cool). And on Furry Paws, my favorite game of all, I raised, trained, and bred virtual dogs.
I loved the game so much that I taught myself HTML and CSS to decorate my kennel above and beyond the in-game options. I designed quirky, unreadable fonts and banners that flashed so brightly they should have come with a warning sign. Nearly a decade later, I took those skills to the next level by studying computer science in college. I can't help but think my afternoons on Furry Paws shaped that decision.
Nowadays, at 28, I stick to just a few, far less joyful websites. I read the news or scroll through Instagram and TikTok — my colorful cartoon pets long ago abandoned. Even if I wanted to go back to relive the nostalgia, I couldn't. Most of my online childhood haunts don't exist anymore — at least, not in the way that I remember them. It's a stark contrast to when childhood memorabilia of generations past like comic books, board games, and cartoons stuck around for decades. As younger generations spend more and more of their lives on the internet — which is more ephemeral than most realize — and as internet trends cycle through increasingly brief lifespans, our past disappears earlier and earlier.
The late 2000s and early 2010s were the heyday of massive multiplayer online games designed for young kids. Dozens of games emerged, including Webkinz, where real stuffed animals morphed into digital pets; Toontown, Disney's cartoon universe; Moshi Monsters, where 80 million players worldwide raised pet monsters; and Stardoll, a dress-up game that at one point had 400 million users.
For my generation of young millennials and elder Gen Zers, these games were far more than just a way to pass the time — they were formative experiences. Dylan Maleno, a 20-year-old from Pennsylvania, recalled starting his online gaming journey at just 5 or 6. "I was big on Club Penguin, Wizard101, Moshi Monsters, and this obscure one called Ourworld," he told me. He was particularly drawn to their cozy environments and their "sense of false responsibility." Most games involved furnishing virtual homes, decorating spaces, and caring for digital pets — essentially, an online version of playing house. "It probably tickles some part of the undeveloped brain," he said.
Club Penguin, which ran from 2005 to 2017, stands out as one of the era's most beloved virtual worlds. At its peak, it had more than 200 million users. Lance Priebe, who created Club Penguin and sold it to Disney in 2007, said that the game was "modeled like a Saturday morning cartoon or a show" and has become a "cultural artifact." "As a child, I'd rush home from school to watch cartoons," he said. "That same generation logged into Club Penguin to play with friends."
The brief, exhilarating world of my childhood couldn't last.
Jake Hahn, a Gen Zer in Illinois, perfectly captures the impact the game had in "Club Penguin Is Gone and I Am Still Not OK," an article he wrote for his high-school newspaper in 2021. Reflecting on his experiences he wrote, "I memorized everyone's online flightless bird more than any math problem I've ever worked on. Those chance meetings on the virtual island were all we talked about for days afterward."
The networking aspect of the games was a large part of the appeal. "It's very exciting to have those interactions. Even if they're not always super positive," Sara Grimes, an associate professor at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Information who specializes in children's digital-media culture, told me. "You can experiment with different facets of the self and not be beholden to the realities and potential limitations that you experience in your everyday life. As a 9-year-old, you can pretend that you're 11. You can try things on."
Since the sites were made for children, they were heavily moderated. Club Penguin blocked swearing and words such as "address," "school," and "phone number" from chats to prevent users from sharing identifiable information. Parents could also use an "Ultimate Safe Chat" option that allowed their child to interact with others only by choosing from a list of pre-written comments.
Still, many parents worried about who their kids were talking to online — fears that weren't completely unfounded. Several online stores stopped selling gift cards for the popular virtual world Habbo Hotel in 2012 after an investigation revealed lapses in moderation that allowed explicit sexual messages to slip through. Following the revelation, one of the firm's key investors backed out, and over half of the game's 9 million monthly users left the platform.
Most of these websites didn't experience such a dramatic loss of users. Instead, it was a gradual decline as kids turned their attention to newer, shiner distractions. As smartphones took over in the early 2010s, people started to play around on their phones instead of their desktops; mobile games like Angry Birds, Temple Run, and Flappy Bird took off. Around the same time, online kids' websites, many of which weren't compatible with smartphones, started to die out.
Disney tried to keep up. In 2017 it shut down Club Penguin and replaced it with a mobile version, Club Penguin Island. But it never quite caught on and was discontinued a year later. Toontown shut down in 2013. Moshi Monsters ceased operations in 2019. While sites like Webkinz, Wizard101, and Neopets remain active, they've become ghost towns compared to what they used to be. The brief, exhilarating world of my childhood couldn't last.
Today, kids spend their time on Roblox (some 80 million daily active users), an online platform that allows users to design and play games created by others, and Fortnite (100 million monthly active users), a gaming platform that includes everything from survival games to Guitar Hero look-alikes.
In some ways, these virtual words are similar to the games of my own childhood: They provide a space for children to escape the stresses of everyday life while interacting with others in a safe, moderated environment. Priebe referred to them as the "grandchildren of Club Penguin."
But Maleno, the 20-year-old who grew up playing MMOs, doesn't believe Fortnite and Roblox games were designed for younger audiences. "The streamers are adults, the content creators are adults, the skins you purchase in-game are adults, and it's permeated with violence — albeit cartoon violence," he said about one of the most popular Fortnite games, Fortnite Battle Royale. In separate statements, spokespeople from Fortnite and Roblox told me that the games have robust child-safety controls.
Every generation is partial to what was hot when they were kids — and skeptical of everything that comes after.
When they aren't battling it out on Fortnite, children are increasingly on social media. In 2021, a study found that 40% of kids under 13 already use Instagram and Facebook. And in 2020, The New York Times reported that "a third of TikTok's US users may be 14 or under." This became apparent in May when a TikTok of a young girl's "get ready with me" clip went viral before being deleted. Many commenters thought the girl was too young to be using the platform, while others criticized her for wearing makeup. Some suggested that she was taking part in activities designed for adults because she had been exposed to others on the platform doing the same.
The reaction to the video underscored the absence of online spaces made exclusively for children. Instead of playing with toys or games, concerned observers argued that today's young people are being exposed to content primarily created for adults on social media.
Ashley Hernandez, a 27-year-old art educator who works with children of various ages across New York City, has a different take. She doesn't think the adult spaces are necessarily harming kids — in fact, she argued that children mimicking adult behaviors in media is nothing new. Children have always tried to imitate adults by playing house or role-playing adult professions such as doctors and nurses.
"I believe people might be amplifying the adultification of young people because they're so stuck in the differences between generations and struggle on seeing the similarities," Hernandez said. "We would understand that we're not as different as we think if adults tried to understand young people more and have more in-depth conversations and actually listen."
It's easy to romanticize the past and gloss over what we were exposed to as children. I remember countless incidents of people trying to get past chat censors on MMOs by intentionally misspelling offensive words or by replacing letters with numbers. At the time, I didn't think anything of it, and I still don't. It's normal for children to push boundaries to see what they can get away with. And while I'll never really know if my online friends were who they said they were, my interactions with them definitely left a positive impact. Even when things in my personal life felt difficult, it was comforting to know I could rely on my online friends.
Every generation is partial to what was hot when they were kids — and skeptical of everything that comes after. For my generation, who grew up as the internet gained mainstream acceptance, this cycle of nostalgia appears to have accelerated. Tough market competition and higher consumer expectations have forced innovation, leading to shorter product cycles and more frequent releases. This means there's always something newer, faster, and better for us to move on to. Of course, each time we move on, we leave a part of us behind.
What's surprising now is just how quickly my cohort of 20-somethings are trying to return to our origins. In 2017, Neopets was bought by the Chinese firm NetDragon. When the entrepreneur and investing consultant Dominic Law joined the company in 2020, he began an internal campaign to revive the brand. In the six months leading up to April, the number of monthly users tripled. Over half of the players were over the age of 18, suggesting that many had been pulled back by nostalgia.
No matter how much effort the new owners of Neopets put into reviving the website, I doubt it'll ever be the bustling community hub that it once was. But for those who grew up with it, logging into Neopia is a rare opportunity to dip back into their childhood.
The nostalgia we feel for these online communities is a testament to how much they impacted our formative years. Despite being completely virtual, they provided a space for us to learn about ourselves and grow. It's only natural that we sometimes feel the pull to try to recreate these experiences as adults.
And the cycle will continue. Just as my cohort fondly recalls Neopets and Furry Paws, kids today will make nostalgic memes about Fortnite and Roblox. In five years, it will be something entirely new. Instead of the permanent internet that was touted when we were kids — "What you put online will haunt you forever!" — we're stuck with a quickly evolving realm that risks sucking our childhoods into oblivion.
Aimee Pearcy is a freelance journalist who writes about technology and digital culture.
