The new movie has come out in the theaters and your 10 year old wants to go see it with some of her friends. You don’t know anyone who has seen it yet, so you aren’t sure if it is appropriate for her or not. What do you do?
As a parent, we find ourselves in this situation so frequently.
Media is so readily available – in so many forms. How are we to know which ones fits our family standards or not?
I have two favorite resources for measuring media content against our family standards.
The first, and one I use most frequently, is Common Sense Media.
Common Sense Media rates and reviews movies, games, apps, websites, TV, books, and music. Every rating on Common Sense Media is based on two factors – age appropriateness and quality. As a parent, it is so helpful to have a go-to website where I can quickly and easily discern whether certain media fits our family’s guidelines.
It’s important to be aware of how they rank and review. Common Sense Media believes that families should have the information they need to make educated decisions regarding the media they allow. It does not, however, have an overall standard of what is and is not okay in media – just what is age appropriate. My experience has been that for young children and early adolescents, their age appropriate ratings have been pretty dead on for our family. As with so many things, once you move into older adolescents, age appropriate labels may not fit your family’s standards regarding media. I would encourage you to read the reviews, not just the suggested age rating. Find out the reasons they rate them the way they do and measure that against what you are and are not okay with.
The other site I frequently check is Kids In Mind.
Kids in Mind is more limited, however, because it only rates and reviews movies, not other forms of media. Kids in Mind compares their service to food labels. They only provide information on the content of a movie – they do not provide a review, suggestion, or critique of that content.
One reason I like Kids in Mind is that they are very thorough in their description of the movie, so families have clear information about what it entails. I also like their rating system for the content of the film. They do not assign a certain, age specific rating per movie. Instead, they base their ratings on three distinct categories: Sex & Nudity, Violence & Gore, and Profanity. Each of those categories are then given a rating on a scale of 1-10.
So if you haven’t before, check out these two review sites and see if they would be helpful for your family to monitor the media content in your home.
