Ages & Grades
5th - 6thPre-K | Kindergarten | 1st - 2nd | 3rd - 4th | 5th - 6th | 7th - 8th | High School
Highlights
- They play multiplayer games online
- Many get cell phones
- Kids' social interaction segregates into "types"
- Many parents start to lose control of kids' media selection
- The PG-13 movie becomes a weekly request
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- Tween and teen sitcoms, reality shows, and some adult dramas on broadcast and cable channels such as the CW, Fox, NBC, and MTV
- Live action PG, PG-13, and some R-rated movies
- Online worlds with their own avatars and social networking sites
- Fan sites like Harry Potter
- Multi-player online games such as Runescape
- Video sharing sites like YouTube
- Email accounts
- Instant messaging
- Adult music, music videos, and iPods with video
- Using the Internet for school work, including search, blogging
- T and some M-rated sports, action, and fantasy games on video consoles and handhelds
- Cell phones
- Preadolescence hits, secondary sex characteristics developing
- Moody, independent, breaking away from parents
- Peer relations and group dynamics become very important
- Kids’ social interaction segregates into “types”
- Acute awareness of differences, race, sexual preference, physical strength, ability, or beauty
- Early sexual posing
- Ability to understand abstract ideas
- Setting time limits
- Loss of control of media selection
- Setting up online safety and parental control features
- Balancing kids’ growing independence with safety concerns, particularly as it relates to sharing of personal information online
- Credibility of information in news and online sources
- Self-directed communication online via email and mobile phones
- Establishing a code of ethics online related to cyberbullying and cheating
- Children’s exposure to rampant consumerism, in particular advergames, advertisements, and product tie-ins to online worlds
- Children’s exposure to violence in games, exacerbated by first-person point of view
- Recognition of stereotypes by race and gender
- Children’s exposure to glamorized adult behavior with few consequences such as sex, smoking, and drinking
- Body image issues related to skinny models / celebrities and toned athletes
The information included in this guide is a reference point for what most children are exposed to at each grade level.
All children and families are different, therefore this may not be accurate for all children.
