Common Sense Media is advertised as providing "Trusted ratings created with families in mind".

However, there is an acute political bias and agenda promoted by this website that outranks community contributions and feedback, and that is in direct contrast to the purpose for which this website seems to promote itself.

"Common-sense" as a term assumes that the sense (or consensus) of all community users is the leading source of information generated from the website. This is not the case. Although Parents and Children can contribute to a general survey to determine collective age-ratings and discussion about content, the primary metric presented from the website to the public is based on reviews given by the websites own Reviewers, each of whose opinions appear to outrank all other community members, and whose opinions also appear to be politically biased.

By way of example, are two films that have found themselves at the center of the so-called Culture Wars: Cuties (2020) and Sound of Freedom (2023).

Cuties (2020) is a Netflix coming-of-age film that has been publicly criticised for sexualising and exploiting child actors as young as 11-years old. The film and its potentially harmful practices have been defended by such liberal media outlets as The Rolling Stone, The Washington Post and The Guardian. In the case of Common Sense Media, Cuties is rated a 2-of-5 by 95 parents, a 1-of-5 by 100 "kids" (to use the websites diminutive term) and a 4-of-5 by 1 Common Sense Media Reviewer. The leading metric for this film as found in a web search of this website is 4-of-5 stars: with 195 community reviewer ratings outranked by a single positive review by the website's own reviewer. (Note: according to the websites own rating system, four stars means "Excellent - highly recommended and worth seeking out". Alternatively, the 95 parents rated the film "Disappointing - could have been better and/or has significant flaws" while 100 children rated the film "Don't bother - your time is worth more than this").

Sound of Freedom (2023) is a child trafficking awareness film released by Angel Studios that features a Christian main character and is based on a true story. The film has been publicly attacked by such liberal outlets as The Rolling Stone, The Washington Post and The Guardian. In the case of Common Sense Media, Sound of Freedom is rated a 5-of-5 by 100 parents, a 5-of-5 by 13 children and a 2-of-5 by 1 Common Sense Media Reviewer. The leading metric for this film as found in a web search of this website is 2-of-5 stars: with 113 community reviewer ratings outranked by a single negative review by the website's own reviewer. (Note: according to the websites own rating system, two stars means "Disappointing - could have been better and/or has significant flaws". Alternatively, all 113 community reviewers rated the film "Truly outstanding - the best of what the media has to offer").

The website informs that "Common Sense Media reviewers include writers, editors, and child development experts. They're trained in creating high-quality parenting advice based on best practices in child development". However, the political bias of each of these reviewers, and the website as a whole is not disclosed, but is open to public scrutiny. Furthermore, the website appears to employ 14 general metrics to support the websites mission "to recognize and champion high-quality media". These metrics include: 1) identifying the youngest appropriate age classification for the content (in contrast to the age-classification advertised), 2-11) ten content categories against which the content is rated (including educational value, positive messages and positive role models) and a five-star rating by 12) the websites own endorsed reviewers, 13) parent reviewers and 14) children reviewers (the latter two from the community). Unfortunately, instead of providing transparency about how these different metrics work together and are used to present a cohesive and bias-free community rating, the entire weight of this ratings system leans on metric 12: the subjective opinions of the websites reviewers about whether or not a film is any "good". It is at this point that the websites ratings system collapses, since community reviews have no weighting power compared to website reviewers, which ultimately minimise or directly contradict community parent and children's ratings (as discussed above). (Note: in web searches, reviews are ranked hierarchically, with the websites own "official" reviews appearing top of screen, followed by "Parent reviews" and then "Kid reviews").

What this means is that Common Sense Media functions as a centralised movie and content review platform in the guise of a community review aggregator. It promotes itself as "creating a safe, healthy, and equitable digital world for kids and families" while limiting the voices of those children and families, and promoting its own political leanings, at times in direct contrast to them. Since the website wields power over the voices of the people it claims to support, Common Sense Media has instead positioned itself as a socio-political vehicle used to promote content that is supportive of its own ideology, while attempting to delegitimatize content that does not. Furthermore, it does so under the pretence of being openly supportive of all community voices.

On the face of it, some of the website's tools may be helpful for parents or children looking for quick family-friendly ratings, or a forum to discuss community feedback about content. This will not limit users looking for such features or those whose politics are in alignment. However, because of the lack of political neutrality from this website, and the broad and biased deviation from community reviews in support of leftist political leanings (that intentionally or unintentionally support views and practices that endanger rather than protect children), Common Sense Media cannot rightly be advertised as "trusted", nor can it rightly be advertised as having "families in mind". What it can be advertised as is "biased" and having a "left-wing political agenda in mind".

As such, the position of Common Sense Media as providing "Trusted ratings created with families in mind" is untenable.

Sources:
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/about-us/our-mission/about-our-ratings
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-reviews/cuties
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-reviews/sound-of-freedom

I hate Common Sense Media. It is just a bunch of soccer moms whining about the most inoffensive harmless stuff in movies.

For example, they gave The Nutty Professor a 5/5 for swearing and sex even though there really isn't that much swearing and there isn't any sex or nudity in it. They claim that it is racist and also offensive towards people with obesity. First of all, all 4 of the N-words are said by black people and there is nothing else even remotely racist about it. Second, THE WHOLE POINT OF THE MOVIE IS TO SHOW THAT YOU SHOULD ACCEPT PEOPLE FOR WHO THE ARE AND NOT WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE. WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT.

Also, how does The Nutty Professor have a 0/5 for positive messages when Caillou has a 3/5. What kind of crap is that?

Also, why does SpongeBob have a 2/5 for violence and a 1/5 for language. It should be a 0/5 for both of those. These idiots think that "stupid" and "idiot" are curse words.

Their ratings are also really inconsistent. You wanna know what Tommy Boy and Superbad have in common? Both of them were given a 16+ rating by Common Sense Media.
And do you wanna know what A Clockwork Orange and Vicky Cristina Barcelona have in common? Both of them were given A FRIGGING 17+ BY COMMON SENSE MEDIA. WHAT THE HECK. VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA IS BARELY A STEP UP FROM CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, WHICH HAS A 12+ RATING. I AM LOSING MY MIND TRYING TO COMPREHEND WHY THIS SITE IS SO TERRIBLE.

Speaking of which, why does Eternals have a 14+ when Catch Me If You Can, which has more sex and language, only has a 12+. And don't try to tell me that Eternals was too violent. That movie was freaking boring. Every single scene consisted of characters talking and absolutely nothing else.

Also, National Lampoon's Vacation has a 16+ rating for language and very brief nudity (which is bullcrap because it only has 9 F-bombs and most 12-year-olds already hear the F-word 20 times a day from their parents) when Doc Hollywood, which shows a lot of breast nudity in one scene, only has a 13+. It's not even like it's because the studio behind Doc Hollywood has more money because literally nobody is paying you to crappily rate their movies, so there's no reason to be that inconsistent. Like, at least the MPAA is inconsistent with their ratings because big studios like Disney and Marvel are richer than the independent studios. Now, it's a stupid reason, but still, at least it's a friggin' reason.

Also, why I does The Blues Brothers have a 16+ rating for the violence and the 9 F-bombs? That's the same age rating as South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, which is way more violent and has more than 140 F-bombs.

Don't trust Common Sense Media. If you want to know if you should let your child watch a movie, just look at the parent's guide on IMDb.

I've seen my parents use this site before for the purposes of "checking on" games before I play them, and the results are laughable. The main reviewers on the site- those who are paid to do review the games, are terribly biased.
The main premise of the site is a place for parents to talk about and review media (as the name suggests) and share the ideas to the public, which works on paper, but everything has become terribly colluded.
I once read an article on their site about the "Top Ten Worst TV Shows For Kids" and Nick
S Fred was very high on the list. Fred was notorious for his YouTube career in the past, but the Television Show was quite tame. Most parents hated it for how annoying the character was, and though I agree with them, the site had no reservations when it came to bashing every single thing that was "bad for kids", when it truly wasn't.
(Spongebob was on this list. Are you kidding me?)

This goes for the game-by-game, website-by-website reviews as well. For example- there are two similar games called Animal Jam and Club Penguin- two MMOs that are built for kids and can be perfectly safe when used properly. As someone who has had experience with both games- one is obviously better than the other (coughanimaljamcough) but the parent who reviewed the site gave Club Penguin the better rating in Safety and Learning. This makes no sense to me as the Disney team hasn't updated their filter in years- you can say shiiiiiittt and other variations of swear words, but you can't say 'war', lol.
In the Learning category, it was given a 3/5, even though it has no educational content whatsoever, even Animal Jam has more educational tidbits than the Disney game. One of the selling points is actually the "education" aspects lol

I realize that turned into a bit of a rant about two reviews, but this circumstance applies all over the site.

There are, though, positive aspects, as there are negative ones. There are a handful of genuine reviews on the site, if you're willing to dig for them.

I also understand that this is a site built for concerned parents of young children, but really, take everything you see here with a grain of salt.

Thanks,
Whitehat

UPDATE:
I forgot to mention that I saw someone from the website commenting on an article about how to use a Proxy Server, haha. The typing style was very similar to one on the site and it drove me up a wall just reading it- the user using the official Common Sense account was ranting about how kids shouldn't have freedom on the internet. It made them come off as very standoffish. Not really the way to represent your website;)
But a good read if you like comment flamewars!