• Is it age appropriate?

  About our ratings

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  Not age appropriate for kids under 13, age appropriate for kids over 17; suggested age 15.

• Is it any good?

  3.0

• Common Sense says

  Gossip site's guilty pleasure fun isn't always G-rated.

Why We Rated This for Ages 15–17

The good stuff

• Educational value:

  Interspersed with the fluff are helpful tidbits and thought-provoking mini-essays on fitness, technology, health, and other serious topics. Recent sample: a blog entry about "solar forests," a futuristic concept design where treelike solar panel installations might be installed to juice up electric cars.
• User-created content:

  Users can submit their own recipes, polls, videos, "looks" (photos of themselves wearing a favorite outfit), and reviews of beauty care products such as makeup, deodorant, and tweezers. They can compile wish lists of stuff they'd like to buy and write their own blog entries, which will be featured in the community area of the site. Most of the user-created blogs we saw needed a spellcheck but were interesting peeks into individuals' lives. Going a step further, users can create their own Web site, basically a dedicated, customizable blog, under the PopSugar domain name. 

What to watch out for

• Messages:

  The site doesn't set the best example of how to spend one's time online. It glamorizes the celebrity lifestyle and encourages young women to shop for expensive items their favorite stars like. 
• Violence:

  References are no worse than a daily newspaper's. Example: a story about Stevie Wonder’s son being arrested for felony domestic violence.
• Sex:

  More than a little mature content, including a sex advice column called Hump Day, Cosmo tips on sex positions and Nicole Kidman's nude scenes from Eyes Wide Shut. Copious coverage of celebrity baby bumps, relationships, and make-out sessions. Responsible sex education in the form of well-written pieces on birth control and a fascinating photo retrospective of female protection ads through the years.

• Language:

  Some rough language in member posts such as s--t and f--k. One instance of "scum-sucking bastard."
• Consumerism:

  Shopping is so intertwined with content that it can be hard to tell legit stories from product pitches.  Most pages have an ad at the top, in the middle, and occasionally disguised to look like a blog entry, plus text links by designer name to ShopStyle, a sister shopping site. More product name dropping occurs in the blogs, which cover celebrities favorite booty and where you can buy it. (Lindsay Lohan fan? Pick up her new tanning lotion and a pair of her fave leggings.) Then there are Bookmarks, a set of blogs that are nothing more than fashion, beauty, fitness, pet, food, gadget, and baby product descriptions with links. Members can earn points bookmarking their own online finds and can spend the points buying virtual gifts. 

• Drinking, drugs, & smoking:

  Passing mentions in member posts but not glamorized. Food section includes alcoholic drink recipes.

How safe is it?

• Personal privacy:

  Pretty good privacy is possible but setup isn't obvious. By default, user content is fairly exposed. Site moderators can be counted on to remove obscenities or threats and users can keep their status private. But profiles are public and users can't delete or withdraw their own blog entries or comments once posted, or even close down their own accounts without site intervention. The best way to keep posts private is to create a group, an option hidden under the TeamSugar tab, and make it invitation only.
• Online interaction:

  Users can interact lots of different ways: email, guestbook entries, sending and receiving virtual gifts, posting to a Twitterlike “chatter” public stream, message boards and blog comments. (When we visited in August 2009 the live chat room wasn’t working.) Moderators seem to do a good job of cleaning up any personal attacks, threats, spam or lewd images, and users have a flagging tool at their disposal. As a result, interactions are mostly friendly and respectful.
• Parental controls:

  None.

What Parents Need to Know

About PopSugar

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