CommonsenseMedia.org is a site dedicated to finding the most age-appropriate media resources for children and teens. The creators of the site write,
Media is fun and our kids love it. We also know that kids now spend so much time absorbing its messages and images that it has become "the other parent" in their lives. We started this organization because we know families need trustworthy information to help manage their kids' media lives. We're posting our beliefs here so that all our users can know the underlying principles that guide our philosophy and mission.
Their beliefs include "media sanity, not censorship," and "we can't cover their eyes, but we can teach them to see." In order to access most of the information available on CommonsenseMedia, the user is prompted to create a profile. The short questionnaire asks your email address, a password you want to use, and the names and ages and birth months of your offspring. This was a problem for me, since I don't have kids. I quickly invented "Ruby," my ten-year-old fake daughter who turns 11 in August (I expect presents). Once this process was complete, I could explore the site and write my own media reviews.
The types of media reviewed are books, movies, web sites, television shows, games, and music. I am particularly interested in teenage social media use, so I clicked on "Web site reviews," "Social networking," then "Show reviews for 15-17." The header of the page that comes up is "Safe social networking web sites for teenagers." Here, parents (of both real and fake children) can read reviews that professional and amateur reviewers have written about the sites their teens might frequent. The CommonsenseMedia.org reviewers include information like "Why We Rated This Site for This Age Group," "What Parents Need to Know," and "Families Can Talk About." The reviews are also color-coded green [safe], yellow [iffy], red [no go], and gray [no kid should go to this site, ever.]
In addition to just browsing the site aimlessly, users can search for specific titles or keywords, and view compiled lists of things, like "Teen music with a message."
This site is attractively designed and extremely easy to use. I can imagine that parents who want to know more about the music their kids are listening to, or the movie their kid wants to rent, or the video game that just came out would find this information useful and comforting.
However (and this is sort of a big however), I wish they didn't ask for child information. Alright, they'll suggest sites for your kids to go to (apparently Ruby would like FreeRice.org, a charitable quiz game), but it's sort of presumptuous. This would be a great resource for librarians to have at their fingertips, especially in a public library working with teens. Have a weird feeling about the site a teen patron is on? Want to suggest a family-friendly video game for a grandmother who is having her grandkids over for the weekend? Well then you'd better either have a kid yourself or not feel guilty about making one up. It's interesting to see what parents of teens think about social media sites (they rated Twitter as "iffy"), and I hope that the people behind CommonsenseMedia.org open up the gates to us non-parents sometime soon.
To clarify: I am not anti-kid! I'm the opposite of anti-kid. What I am is peeved about being forced to make up a child just so I can access a web site.
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