Ages & Grades
1st - 2ndPre-K | Kindergarten | 1st - 2nd | 3rd - 4th | 5th - 6th | 7th - 8th | High School
Highlights
- They start to participate in online worlds and create their own avatars
- They watch animated and live-action G- and PG-rated movies
- Their vocabulary tends to increase ahead of comprehension
- Establishing basic Internet safety rules and setting up parental control features is key for parents
Watch
- Cartoons and tween sitcoms on broadcast and cable channels such as PBS, Disney, and Nickelodeon
- Animated and live action G and PG-rated movies
- Matching, coloring, educational, and fantasy online games on Web sites such as Stardolls, Cartoon Doll Emporium, and Line Rider
- Online worlds with their own avatars like Neopets, Club Penguin, and Webkinz
- Beginning online searches
- E-rated and E10+-rated educational, sports, and fantasy games on video consoles and handhelds
- Learning to type
- Beginning of team sports and social groupings
- Ability to read improves
- Very literal
- Make up their own minds
- Vocabulary increases ahead of comprehension
- Establishing appropriate limits on time and access
- Setting up online safety, filtered search, safe chat, and parental control features
- Establishing basic Internet safety rules and teaching safe ways to search
- Children’s exposure to inappropriate content as they begin to browse and search
- Children’s exposure to consumerism, in particular licensed characters from favorite TV shows and movies being used to sell toys, junk food, etc., as well as advergames, advertisements, and product tie-ins to online worlds
- Helping kids manage hurt feelings if they are excluded from groups or games in online virtual worlds
- Children’s exposure to and imitation of fantasy violence
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.