Ages & Grades
7th - 8thPre-K | Kindergarten | 1st - 2nd | 3rd - 4th | 5th - 6th | 7th - 8th | High School
Highlights
- Many start Instant Messaging
- They set up profiles on and participate in online social networks
- They're at risk for developing antisocial tendencies
- Cyberbullying is a major concern for parents
Watch
- Reality shows and adult dramas on broadcast and cable channels such as the CW, Fox, NBC, and MTV
- Live action PG-13 and R-rated movies
- Online worlds with their own avatars and social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace
- Multi-player online games aimed at older kids such as World of Warcraft and Halo 3
- Video sharing sites like YouTube
- Email accounts
- Instant messaging
- Adult music, music videos, iPods with video
- Using the Internet for school work, including search, blogging
- Creating and uploading photos, videos, music, games
- T and M-rated sports, action, and fantasy games on video consoles and handhelds
- Cell phones, texting
- Sexual experimentation begins
- Intense peer relationships with outliers punished socially
- Kids pulling away from family and shifting to friends
- Care about looks and appearance, and being accepted; easily offended and sensitive to personal criticism
- At-risk for developing anti-social tendencies depending on peer groups
- Can reflect, analyze, and confront moral and ethical questions, but aren’t necessarily ready to deal with answers
- Communication and media consumption gets private and portable
- Loss of control of media selection
- Balancing kids’ growing independence with safety concerns, particularly as it relates to sharing personal information online
- Credibility of information in news and online sources
- Self-directed communication online via Instant Messaging 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.