• Is it age appropriate?

  About our ratings

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  Not age appropriate for kids under 7, age appropriate for kids over 8; suggested age 8.

• Is it any good?

  5.0

• Common Sense says

  Thought-provoking PBS site weighs Internet's pros and cons.

Why We Rated This for Ages 8 and Up

The good stuff

• Educational value:

  Kids who might lack the patience to sit through a full-length documentary can glean a lot by watching the site's short videos. Divided into Living Faster, Relationships, Waging War, Virtual Worlds, and Learning, the wide-ranging content touches on every technology hot button and then some. Kids can choose from hundreds of interviews with experts and laypeople, learn how a twenty-something's brain, spine and other body parts are affected by hyperconnectivity, and go inside one of the new Army recruiting centers that use Xbox games to reel in kids.  If kids want more, they can click on links at the bottom of each page to access background PDFs.
• User-created content:

  On the Your Stories area of the site, visitors can submit their own short videos to be viewed by others and for possible inclusion in the finished documentary. There were only a few dozen personal videos on the site in October 2009, and most of those looked professionally produced by PBS, but all were interesting testimonials that put a human face on technology.  
• Messages:

  Tech-savvy kids born after the advent of the Internet have never known anything but a plugged-in life. By sharing how people of all ages and backgrounds are adapting to an increasingly digital world, the site can help kids think more critically about their own consumption of technology. Is the Internet mostly good or bad for us -- or a little of both? Is it dehumanizing or a breakthrough way to socialize and learn? Parents might not personally approve of every view here, but the voices are balanced and used to inform rather than dictate, ultimately helping families make their own decisions about how much they will let technology shape their lives.  

What to watch out for

• Violence:

  Twice-removed links to gruesome photos of Iraqi body parts. Excerpts from Taliban recruitment videos showing soldiers on a cliff machine-gunning unseen Americans below. Realistic-looking virtual characters crumpling to the floor after being shot.
• Sex:

  Not an issue.
• Language:

  Not an issue.
• Consumerism:

  Not an issue.
• Drinking, drugs, & smoking:

  Not an issue.

How safe is it?

• Personal privacy:

  Visitors don't have to reveal any personal information to watch videos. Submitting a video or comment requires entering a name and email address.
• Online interaction:

  Leaving comments after the videos is the only way to  interact with others on the site, and the few comments posted when we visited shortly after launch in October 2009 were civil, thoughtful responses to the content. 
• Parental controls:

  Not an issue.

What Parents Need to Know

About Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier

Families Can Talk About