Common Sense Media
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| Nonprofit organization | |
| Genre | Advocacy Research Consumer advice Parenting |
| Founded | February 27, 2003 |
| Founder | James P. Steyer, CEO |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, U.S. |
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Number of employees
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51-200 |
| Website | commonsensemedia |
Common Sense Media (CSM) is a San Francisco based non-profit organization that provides education and advocacy to families to promote safe technology and media for children.
Founded by Jim Steyer in 2003, Common Sense Media reviews books, movies, TV shows, video games, apps, music, and websites and rates them in terms of age-appropriate educational content, positive messages/role models, violence, sex and profanity, and more for parents making media choices for their kids. Common Sense Media has also developed a set of ratings that are intended to gauge the educational value of videos, games, and apps. The nonprofit's "Learning Ratings" attempt to assess different types of learning qualities within various forms of media. The new rating system was funded in part by SCEFDN's $10 million learning initiative program.
Donations from foundations and individuals and fees from media partners finance Common Sense Media. Today, the organization distributes its content to more than 100 million US homes via partnerships with a variety of traditional and online media companies. Common Sense Media describes itself as "the nation’s largest membership organization dedicated to improving kids’ media lives". By 2016, the organization had over 65 million unique users and worked with more than 275,000 educators across the United States.
In addition to its English language services, Common Sense Media also offers resources in Spanish.
After founding JP Kids, an educational media company for children, and Children Now, a national child advocacy and media group, Jim Steyer founded Common Sense Media in 2003. In an interview with the New York Times, Steyer said he intended to “create a huge constituency for parents and kids in the same way that Mothers Against Drunk Driving or the AARP has done." The group received $500,000 in seed money from a group of donors including Charles Schwab, George Roberts, and James Coulter.
To assess parents’ concern about their children’s media habits, Common Sense Media commissioned a poll, which found that “64 percent [of parents with children 2-17] believed that media products in general were inappropriate for their families. It said that 81 percent expressed concern that the media in general were encouraging violent or antisocial behavior in children.” The polling firm, Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, said that “only one out of five interviewed ‘fully trusted'’ the separate industry-controlled ratings systems for music, movies, video games and television.”
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