Board Game Arena

thinking it would be good for school children to be playing on here with their friends, bit like an after school club. what age can you join and what safety mechanisms are in place for younger people to play?

There's no real minimum age, except for a Premium membership. All tables have a chat feature, but people are mostly silent or friendly. In the rare case someone is disrespectful, you can block and report them. Obviously this is not an issue if you play among friends.

This was also asked here not too long ago: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... =3&t=19388

Up to my knowledge, there is no specific protection in place at all. (There is no limitation on the age either, as for most place on the internet.)

The "play with friend" mode is quite convenient to not accidentally open your table to stranger and only the peoples you selected. With manual setting of tables, you can also create a group and the restrict the tables you create to "this group only".
However, if the kids want to play with random strangers (or accidentally open a table to stranger), nothing will prevent them from doing so.

[EDIT: removed incorrect sentence], and in most games peoples do not use the chat at all (or only the pre-made sentences like "Good luck and have fun!"). Though some of my friends had a few occurrences of "mean" players.

MoiMagnus wrote: ↑06 February 2021, 17:20 There is some low level of auto-moderation for the in-game chat (English curse words are censored, if I remember correctly)

There is no such thing. The chat filter only warns of possible moderation.

according to the age you can choose on your profile the minimum age for this website is two days before your 5th birthday.

Safety mechanisms: none

I would say that BGA is definitely one of the nicer and friendly places on the internet.

One thing you might not be aware of is that almost any play activity on the site gets logged and is available to anyone. Anyone can see of anyone at which time for how long which game against whom was played. This can be both good and bad for allowing children to play here. Of course if some kids are clever, they will create a hidden 2nd account so they cannot be followed by peers or parents.

thank you all. i agree with what you all say. i've never had any problems here, it's just tricky if you are sign posting people here in a position as a teacher. i think it is great and so many great games to play here.