Do nice guys finish first?

to young audiences through media. These include communication, compassion, courage, curiosity, empathy, gratitude, humility, integrity, perseverance, self-control and teamwork.

BY: LAUREN TAYLOR, ABBIE BURRUS & YALDA UHLS

hildren are spending a significant portion of their time consuming media— which is a good thing for those who make content; a potential concern for parents whose kids consume it; and an exciting opportunity for imparting social and emotional learning and the skills necessary for development and life success.

Parents value this. In fact, research by Common Sense Media (CSM) has shown that education around character strengths is the most important factor they consider when selecting shows and movies for their kids to watch. And guess what? This kind of content can make money, too.

Several years ago, CSM began an initiative to help parents, educators and children choose entertainment that models the skills and strengths necessary for positive youth development. Through extensive research, the team identified a list of 11 key character strengths and life skills that can be taught

This list was then used to develop a first-of-its-kind tagging system that helps parents and children easily identify content promoting these core strengths and skills. In our sample of films, the most frequent ones tagged were perseverance (tagged 795 times), courage (tagged 732 times) and teamwork (tagged 614 times).

We then conducted focus groups and surveys to evaluate the system’s effectiveness, and found that both parents and children responded more positively to content with those tags. But the question is, will they pay for it?