The Coalition of Entertainment Retail Trade Associations (CERTA) has once again billed June as “Entertainment Ratings and Labeling Awareness Month.”
The organization of organizations selected June as the month for its annual initiative since it is the kickoff to summer, when “young people have more free time to enjoy movies, music and videogames.”
The group offers the following tips to parents looking to ensure their children only view age appropriate material:
•Look for the movie or video game rating and content descriptors or the parental advisory label on music;
• Watch the movie, listen to the music, or play the video game with your child;
• Communicate with your children about what the entertainment is about and what they can learn from it;
• Set appropriate limits and prevent entertainment from interfering with duties such as homework and chores; and
• Make full use of the parental control features of new-generation video game consoles and Blu-ray and DVD players to control the video games and movies played on those systems based on their ratings.
CERTA is comprised of The Digital Media Association (DiMA), Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA), National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM) and the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO).
Comments
Re: June is Rating Awareness Month
It's fine to remind parents of some of this stuff, but the fact is, no mainstream (i.e 'rated') movie, video game or song has ever been shown to be at all damaging to kids. Since that's the case, ratings and parental controls are irrelevant. I'm all for watching, playing and listening with my kid - do it all the time. I'm also for communicating, discussing themes, setting limits and making sure the kid gets homework done - do that stuff every day too. And I even agree that some media are more appropriate for older kids - but these media (porn for example) aren't available to children in the first place.
But ratings and parental controls? Why? Why read ratings that are irrelevant? Why control stuff that's never been shown to be anything but completely harmless? It's a waste of my time to even consider such nonsense.
Re: June is Rating Awareness Month
But ratings and parental controls? Why? Why read ratings that are irrelevant? Why control stuff that's never been shown to be anything but completely harmless? It's a waste of my time to even consider such nonsense.
And you are completely free to disregard all such ratings and parental control systems. No one is forcing you to use them. So why are you complaining as if someone were? What harm is it to you that the parents of some other child have decided they would rather not have their kid headshotting zombies or storming the shores of Normandy?
but these media (porn for example) aren't available to children in the first place.
I guess you have never heard of Google.
E. Zachary Knight
Oklahoma City Chapter of the ECA
http://www.theeca.com/chapters_oklahoma
E. Zachary Knight
Divine Knight Gaming
OK Game Devs
Random Tower