I usually spend so much time online to zone out … I’m Raymona and not Raymond because I don’t want to be me when I’m online. I want to forget about life. I chose Raymona because she’s the direct opposite of me. She not a boy for starters, and she don’t live in the Hook. She’s gorgeous like a model and lives in Manhattan, living the life I want to live.(Kirkland,2009, p. 17)

In this quote Raymond expresses his desire to become someone different, someone who has everything he wishes for. In real life, he was often alone and there was an incident in his family that he wanted to escape from so he decided to become Raymona in Second Life. His story made me realize that many of my students are probably in the same situation but the teachers around them don’t know about it. Virtual reality websites provide adolescents with a platform in which they are able to be who they really want to be. Although at first I felt sad for Raymond and the situation he was going through, I was happy to find out that he had found a safe place online.
As educators, we should encourage our students to explore and experience different settings in order to find a space where they feel most comfortable. However, it is also true that if adolescents are reporting more fulfillment from virtual realities than from real life, they probably have underlying problems in school, at home or both. That is why, we, the adults in these adolescents’ lives must intervene whenever students seem to prefer virtual lives rather than their real ones. Second Life and other social networks can become our allies in helping students like Raymond have healthier and supportive relationships around them. If we work together with our students to find out ways to incorporate their favorite aspects of virtual worlds into our classrooms, perhaps we could help them boost their self-confidence and allow them to feel welcomed and accepted in both: virtual and real life.