Researching the movies your kids watch is just "Commonsense"

If you're anything like me, movies are a big part of the time your family spends together.

With the advances in CGI in the last 10 years, movies aimed at families, and more importantly children, are no longer once-a-summer events; there are now year-round options for films that are made and marketed for kids, from toddler to pre-teen. What's more, with the explosion of young adult fiction, film adaptations like those in the Harry Potter and Twilight series transcend normal buzz, and become subject to fevered countdowns by their target audiences (and many bashful parents). Perhaps because of this windfall of profit that flows from films marketed towards young children and "tweens", Hollywood seems bound to stretch what's appropriate for these kids to see. The movie ratings system has always been based on arbitrary standards; but now, with the hunger by studios to promote features to the widest possible audience, the boundaries between material appropriate for children and that meant for adults is bleeding in a way that can be confusing and troubling for parents.  As a parent of a child in this demographic, I struggle with the release of every film that is targeted at my daughter. If you experience this dilemma too, I've got good news...and it only requires "common sense"!

Commonsensemedia.org is a website that provides detailed reviews, for both content and quality, to parents that want to know what their kids are going to be exposed to when they see a film. The site is the work of Common Sense Media, a not-for-profit organization with a non-partisan and unbiased mandate, and is secular in nature. The group's stated mission is to provide to parents trustworthy information to help manage their kids' media lives. Some of the helpful features it offers are

• an overall Age Appropriateness rating for the movie (details About Their Ratings are defined on the site)

• content categories such as "Violence and Scariness", "Drinking Drugs and Smoking", and "Sexy Stuff"; along with opinions on more abstract subjects like "Educational Value" and "Consumerism"

• a "Language" category that explains any use of expletives and suggestive dialogue

• standard reviews from not only the staff of the site, but parents and children as well, which provides a reasonably balanced view of the movie and its appropriateness for your child

• interactive polling on a film ("Are there good role models?" "Does it give kids positive messages?") 

By utilizing this information that commonsensemedia.org provides, parents can arm themselves against the onslaught of feature film marketing and merchandising, to make an informed decision on what movies they'll allow their children to see. Now, you and I can take our families to the multiplex without the fear that material our kids aren't ready for will be sprung on them. And for me, having that information makes a lot of sense.