Know what your family is watching
kbaker April 22nd, 2008
A few months ago my eleven year old daughter came home from school and said her class had spent the day watching the movie "We Are Marshall". Now I won’t get into the whole topic of whether I felt that was a good use of my daughter’s school time or not. But I will tell you one of my first thoughts was "What is the school showing to my kid without my permission."
Having not seen the movie I wanted to know what it was about and if it contained anything inappropriate. We subscribe to Netflix and it has been a good service for us. One of the great things Netflix does is include the review and rating of a movie from www.commonsensemedia.org. This has proven very helpful to me in choosing what movies and programming I should rent.
Using Common Sense Media, I read the review and ratings of "We Are Marshall" and was relieved to find it was a decent movie for my daughter to watch. I did rent the movie from Netflix after the fact and generally agreed with Common Sense Media’s assessment.
And the great thing about Common Sense Media is you don’t have to be a member of Netflix to use it. It is it’s own site and open to everyone! Actually, Common Sense Media is a non-profit with the mission statement of being "dedicated to improving the media and entertainment lives of kids and families." They offer a synopsis of a movie and rate the content in terms of age appropriateness. Their rating categories include sexual content, violence, language, social behavior, commercialism, and drug/alcohol/tobacco use. From all this information you as a parent are better informed about what is out there and what your family is watching.
There are other sites out there that provide similar services. One mentioned to me by a friend was www.kids-in-mind.com. These are all resources we need to know about and use. Happy watching!
Another good site is screenit.com. You can subscribe if you want access to more recent content, but you can access most other content free.