Common Sense Media

What are kids looking at on the internet?Source

With the realm of new media constantly expanding and becoming more and more accessible, one has to wonder: what is appropriate for children? Common Sense Media is a website that parents can use in order to decide what they feel comfortable with their children viewing in terms of both new medias, and old medias. The website includes reviews for movies, games, apps, websites, TV, books and music, as well as an entire section that provides advice for parents. Also, there are recommendations for what are considered to be "the best" in any of these categories. The website can also be viewed in terms of your child's individual age. Common Sense Media does not only direct to the parents would may be inappropriate, but it gives detailed explanations as to why it may be. In the Parent Advice section, for example, one of the topics is "The Side Effects of Media." This section includes statistics, advice & answers and links to related resources and articles for the topic in discussion. The same is applicable for all other sections of this site. I think this is a very good organization to have at this time. Since there is so much media on the internet and on television, it is very hard for a parent to know what is or isn’t appropriate for children, and I think this is a very big problem with some parenting these days. I don’t think there is a lack of caring on the parents’ behalf, there is just too much media out there for a parent to monitor every single thing their child encounters. Although I believe it is very hard for parents to monitor all of this media, I think this website definitely helps narrow it down and makes it a lot easier. The following video is a commercial aired on television for Common Sense Media. In this commercial the young girls have found a racy song and music video on the internet and are inappropriately reenacting the video. The commercial inadvertently suggests that if the parents had used this website, they perhaps could have prevented their children from viewing this video.