New website keeps tweens sweet
Veronica Zelle, creator of Sweety High.
by Melanie Sakai
Four high school girls walk down a hallway at a campus that looks suspiciously like Manhattan Beach’s Mira Costa High School.
Tracy, Paige, Shandra, and Sissy – your typical high school cheerleader, actress, musician and activist –discuss how to save the latest victim of education budget cuts: the arts program.
Tracy volunteers to ask her dad to fund the new school play, which Paige was keen on auditioning for. But a teacher passing by encourages the girls to use their popularity for good by organizing some sort of benefit to save the program — a musical event featuring a local band.
“We could, like, save the school,” Sissy says. “Which is on par with saving the world.”
But none are real students and this isn’t a South Bay high school.
This is Sweety High, a fictitious school portrayed on a tweener social media site with the same name, launched by Manhattan Beach resident Veronica Zelle in February.
Geared towards girls ages nine to 14, the site is an online community, featuring social networking and media sharing, including several interactive web shows.
“We aren’t competing with Facebook and MySpace,” Zelle said. “We can’t compete. But we are offering a different, more age appropriate experience.”
According to Zelle, many young girls commonly lie about their ages to meet age requirements on popular social networking sites. Although many are simply looking to join online communities where they can interact with friends, such sites open the door to cyber bullying, inappropriate content and online predators, she said.
Zelle, who formerly worked in the television industry, hopes to offer tween girls the online experience they are looking for, but without the danger. She began writing “Sweety” — the show about Tracy, Paige, Shandra, and Sissy — for television, but converted it into a web series after the latest writers’ strike in Hollywood hit. Zelle wrote, produced and directed the series, which makes up the backbone of the website.
For additional inspiration and insight into the world of adolescent girls, Zelle met with many of her teenage neighbors and their friends — her “foundation girls” — to find out what they wanted in a social website.
“She asked us what we, when we were in middle school, would have wanted in a website,” said recent Mira Costa graduate Heather Hedges. “We all talked about making it girly and fun, but also a safe space.”
The result of these meetings is a website that is “for girls, by girls.” It has a high school theme where registered users have cyber lockers in which they can post pictures and interact with other users. Girls can also create yearbooks, enter contests, join discussion forums, get signed CDs from major recording artists, and upload and watch original content on the “Tube and Tunes.”
“It’s not just a social networking site,” Zelle said. “It’s an entire world in one place.”
The biggest difference between Sweety High and other social networking sites is its safe nature, according to Zelle. Parental verification is required to register and users must take a safety registration class after signing up. The content is highly moderated to prevent cyber bullying. Girls are also encouraged to become “Savvy Sweeties” by watching safety PSA videos posted on the site and taking a quiz about Internet safety.
Zelle hopes the site will encourage users to be smart and safe, as well as provide a place where girls and parents don’t fear online predators or cyber bullying and where girls don’t feel the need to lie about their ages.
“When given the alternative, girls will take the option where they don’t have to lie and they don’t have to worry about bullies,” she said.
“I have some parents tell me that they are okay with their kids being on Facebook because they also have a Facebook so they can monitor what their kids are doing,” she added. “But I say to them, ‘Would you take your daughter to a bar? Just because you are with them doesn’t mean you can control what they see and hear.’ Young girls are exposed to some scary stuff on Facebook –stuff that they don’t need to be looking at.”
Sweety High also encourages young girls to be creative, develop talents and express themselves without the fear of getting ridiculed.
“When a girl posts a video on the site of her singing or something, she is flooded with feedback,” Zelle said. “But it’s all good feedback and positive encouragement from the other girls.”
The site’s name comes from Zelle’s desire to help girls “stay sweet” during crucial teenage years when it is easy to go down a dangerous road.
She employs older girls like Hedges to be role models for the younger users.
“The girls who are featured on the site are really smart and responsible girls in real life,” Hedges said. “They aren’t just on there because they have pretty faces. They really are representative of what the website is all about.”
The website will soon launch a “Big Sister” program that will allow users to be paired with older girls who will act as role models and mentors. Sisters will be able enter contests and upload original content together, as well as talk about Internet safety.
Thousands of girls on the site from all over the country are registered as users on Sweety High, to which new web series, programs, and features are continually added.
Zelle attributes its success to her ability to understand what young girls want.
“I really do think I have an arrested development,” she said. “Sometimes I’m only around 15-years-old. But it works because I can speak to young girls, and understand them. I’m not an old middle-aged man sitting at a computer telling young girls ‘this is what you are going to get.’”
Due to this ability, Zelle has earned the nickname “teen whisperer.”
“I can’t say enough good things about Veronica,” Hedges gushed. “You talk to her for 10 minutes and she will spout off five or six great ideas that you know she can make happen. She really is Sweety High. She’s the heart and soul of the site.”
Zelle hopes to reach young girls around the world within the next five years.
“We’re going to have Sweety domination,” she said.
For more information on Sweety High visit www.sweetyhigh.com ER