The answer may very well lie in an online persona created in an online world like IMVU.

Executive Summary:

What’s IMVU? It’s a virtual world combined with a chat program that lets a user create an Avatar (physical representation of themselves) to use in the online world.
IMVU is free to start but if you like it you can pay for virtual currency so that you can “buy” new cloths, a house, furniture, etc. IMVU reported making 1 million per month back in June of 2008. See interview here.

Basically IMVU is a world where you’re kids may be trying on a different persona and exploring an overly sexual online world on the cheap.

Pros:

• IMVU runs much faster than other online worlds such as second life.
• It is a fun environment to explore and add to with purchases of clothes, household items and the like.
• Fun to meet new people and talk with a face to the words (though I’m sure everyone isn’t really a size 4 in real life)

Cons:

• As in any virtual world, you can be anyone that you want to be.  A girl, a guy… any image you want to portray.
• IMVU doesn’t have a wide selection of overweight Avatars.  Pretty much everyone is super attractive, with disproportional, measurements, muscles, and way too much skin.
• You could spend a lot of time pretending to be someone you are not.

Overall IMVU is a good idea but to sell it they have really overly sexed it up.  Maybe there are areas in the IMVU landscape that don’t have a ton of people shouting “wanna sex” but I couldn’t find them.

Last links:

• Interview from June 2008 can be found here
• IMVU the site is here
• Short list of stats on IMVU can be found here