The streaming wars are coming for children, which means more minefields and more excellent television.
What Should Your Kids Be Watching?
A guide to the complicated world of childrens movies and television.
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When my daughterturned 3, I started Googling best first movies for kids.
Surely, there were lots of lists and suggestions.
My public library was an undifferentiated shelf of DVDs with Disney logos on the spine.
Lists meant for the preschool set seemed to ignore the major developmental differences between a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old.
And none of the recommendations broke down titles with the information I really wanted: How scary was it?
What was it about, mostly?
How complicated was the story?
Was it obnoxious in a benign way or obnoxious in a toxic way?
I am a TV critic.
My 3-year-olds sense of good was very different.
Of course it was!
Its ratings listed TV shows and movies by specific ages (3-plus, 4-plus, etc.
), rather than wide, meaningless ranges.
I started using Common Sense quite a bit and then I started to see it everywhere.
While my critics brain started whirring along with objections and questions (seriously, who are these people?
How do the ratings even work?
), I could not escape a simultaneous reality: Common Senses ratings were immensely comforting.
Jim Steyerfounded Common Sense Media in 2003.
Hes a Stanford professor and longtime childrens-welfare advocate.
In 1988, Steyer started a lobbying group called Children Now, which pushed for child-appropriate programming on TV.
And he goes, You know, you build big organizations.
Why dont you just do one?
Im like, Fuck it, thats what Im going to do!
That base eventually materialized.
Does it have any bad language?
How many instances of each word?
What words in particular?
Does it have any nudity?
Is there graphic violence?
Is it performed with guns or with other weapons?
Are there onscreen deaths?
The same is true for things like language, consumerism, drinking, drugs, and smoking.
They do not think of themselves as censors.
The messages section forMolly of Denaliapplauds the shows respect for cultural diversity and multiculturalism.
A Common Sense entry does leave some room to reflect the reviewers opinion.
The Is It Any Good?
The Is It Any Good?
review ofWonder Parkexplains that the movie is darker and more intense than kids might expect.
It doesnt mention that the movie is also quite bad.
My critic brain tells me all of this is absurd.
It does not offend my parent brain.
It took time for childrens fiction to adopt the idea that it could also be entertaining.
In other words, TV for children can be both good for themandgood.
Common Sense is there for that, too.
