• Is it age appropriate?

  About our ratings

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  Not age appropriate for kids under 11, age appropriate for kids over 13; suggested age 13.

• Is it any good?

  4.0

• Common Sense says

  Site challenges teens to summarize their lives in six words.

Why We Rated This for Ages 13 and Up

The good stuff

• Educational value:

  Kids learn how to organize their thoughts and write succinctly, always handy skills to have.
• User-created content:

  Silly, sad, clever, cynical, hopeful, despairing, surprisingly poignant, and occasionally profane, the six-word "memoirs" posted on the site reflect the modern teen condition. The mini-masterpieces include: "Wish. Kiss. Bliss. Diss. Miss. Reminisce."  "Our relationship's like a Chinese fingertrap." "Parted hair differently. Still same person."  Heartbreak is the dominant theme, but some cutting and suicidal submissions seem to go beyond teen angst and can be disturbing. These entries draw the most compassionate comments from other teens, who tell the writers to hang in there and believe in themselves.
• Messages:

  Haiku-style writing fun and creativity are the goals of this storytelling site. 

What to watch out for

• Violence:

  A few submissions are gratuitously violent: "I will f--k you up, bitch."
• Sex:

  Nothing worse than "making love."
• Language:

  Kids write the way they speak. In fact, "f--k" is used so frequently it's included in the word cloud of terms you can search on. Watch out for "asshole," "bitch" and "s--t," too.  
• Consumerism:

  Advertising is minimal, consisting of one text link to T shirts with the site logo and a couple of Amazon-linked book jackets for the two memoir collections that Smith Magazine, the owner of Smith Teens, has published so far: Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure and Six-word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak by Writers Famous & Obscure.
• Drinking, drugs, & smoking:

  Drinking is mentioned only occasionally. There are probably other references we missed (the site lacks a standard search box), but overall, submissions don't glorify these particular activities. They're more likely to mention cutting or suicidal thoughts.

How safe is it?

• Personal privacy:

  Everything kids submit, including photos of themselves, is out there for the world to see. However, most teens use aliases and the site lets authors edit or delete their own submissions and comments.
• Online interaction:

  Comments left after submissions are the only means of communication teens have on the site. Like the submissions themselves, comments are largely unregulated. However, teens are mostly supportive of each other’s creative efforts, and when kids use submissions to express suicidal or other depressed thoughts their peers try to comfort them.
• Parental controls:

  Parents enjoy some after-the-fact control in being able to contact Smith Teens if they want a child's submission removed.

What Parents Need to Know

About Smith Teens

Families Can Talk About