👀 No more moonwalking

#67 | Your 18 is my 13

I originally wanted to introduce you to what I believe is the greatest tribute to any artist ever – The Eternal Moonwalk. However, the website developed by Studio Brussel when Michael Jackson died, was shuttered in 2016, after 7 long years. And because of the death of Flash, even the ever-reliable archive.org doesn’t have a working archive for it. If you never saw The Eternal Moonwalk, it was just one screen with a never-ending video collage of people from all over the world performing Michael Jackson’s smooth slide. You could add your own to it too. I didn’t.

But now that this tribute is offline, I need to write about something else. And talking about Michael Jackson naturally takes the conversation to kids. And how to keep them safe. What? It does!

And that is what today’s Just One Thing is about: keeping kids safe.

But not in the physical world. Today, I’m introducing you to the best website ever made to ensure that the content your kids consume is safe for them and that it won’t scar them for life. Books, movies, games, music, shows… everything is reviewed here and assigned actual age ratings each is appropriate for.

And it is not just editors doing it. Kids and their guardians, too submit their own reviews and age ratings. And yes, what parents might rate as 18+ is inevitably rated as 12+ by kids. 

If you have (or are around) kids, you already know what I’m talking about: Common Sense Media. A user-funded resource for all kinds of English-language (and a little bit of Spanish now) content that you can browse before deciding whether to let your kid watch that latest Game of Thrones episode.

And unlike regular reviews, Common Sense also lets you know how explicit the language is, whether there are body parts on display and which, and how graphic is the sex depicted, if at all. 

And they have regular recommendations and curated lists of things to watch, read, play, and listen to, which have formed the bulwark of my book reccos for my child.

Sadly, the website doesn’t have any review mechanism for politicians and political speeches. But considering all of that is unfit for human ears anyway, I guess that’s not much of a such. Or such of a much.

Anyway, got kids? Bookmark this site. And NEVER let them watch Game of Thrones.

Baaa,
Dolly