Links
for Parents
Protect Your Kids from the
Internet and with the Help of the Internet
It's Your Job
Let's get one thing straight: it is my
responsibility as a parent to protect my child from the
internet. It is not the responsibility of rating
services, AOL, or Disney to monitor what my child is
exposed to. It is my job. We need to quit pointing
the finger at everybody else and start taking
responsibility for raising our own kids.
We have a tendency to want technology to parent for
us. It's alright to use V-Chips, MPAA ratings, and
internet filters as parenting tools, but don't view them
as your replacements.
You need to check out every site I tell you about for
yourself and evaluate it for yourself. Please provide feedback
about anything you find.
Help for Parents
GetNetWise
provides an online safety guide, tools for families, and
a list of websites for kids.
Great Websites for Kids is a list of internet sites "for
kids and the adults who care about them." It is
compiled by the Children and Technology Committee of the
Association for Library Service to Children, a division
of the American Library Association.
Kids-in-Mind
rates movies and videos for parents. It assigns each
film three distinct, category-specific ratings: one for Sex
& Nudity, one for Violence & Gore and
one for Profanity. Each rating is on a scale of
zero to ten, depending on quantity (more F-words, for
instance, will mean a higher Profanity rating,
and so on) as well as context (especially when it comes
to the categories of sex, nudity, violence and gore,
since they are not as easily quantifiable as profanity).
It also provides detailed descriptions about each rating
to give the proper context. Kids-in-Mind does not review
movies for quality. Because of the detailed
descriptions, this site is for parents, not children.
Screenit.com
also rates movies and videos for parents. It assigns
ratings of extreme, heavy, moderate,
mild, minor, and none to each of
the following categories based upon the quantity and/or
quality of the content:
- alcohol/drugs
- blood/gore,
- disrespectful/bad attitude
- frightening/tense scenes
- guns/weapons
- imitative behavior
- jump scenes
- music scary/tense
- music (inappropriate)
- profanity
- sex/nudity
- smoking
- tense family scenes
- topics to talk about
- violence
Like Kids-in-Mind, Screenit.com provides detailed
descriptions of the content to give each rating the
proper context. Unlike Kids-in-Mind, it also provides a
brief review of the movie without considering the
objectionable content. Because of the detailed
descriptions, this site is for parents, not children.
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