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Last updated: December 3, 2024
Notice Regarding Children’s Accounts
Common Sense will discontinue accounts for Children [kids under 13], with the update scheduled to be implemented on the website on Thursday, October 9, 2025, and in the app on October 16, 2025. As of these dates, no new Children’s Accounts may be created, and existing Children’s Accounts will be closed and will no longer have access to the Services.
Profiles and associated Personal Information for discontinued Children’s Accounts will be deleted in accordance with our Privacy Policy. Teen Accounts (ages 13–17) and Adult Accounts remain unaffected and will continue to be supported.
COMMON SENSE MEDIA'S CHILDREN'S PRIVACY POLICY
Common Sense Media, Inc. ("we" or "us") is concerned about children's privacy. The websites ("Sites") that we operate provide a forum for all family members, including children, to express their views about movies, books, TV, games, websites, apps and music. While we encourage children to participate appropriately in our Sites, their privacy is extremely important to us.
This Children's Privacy Policy explains our information practices in connection with information provided by Children. For the purposes of this policy, Children are younger kids for whom collecting parental consent is required under applicable laws. For example, under COPPA in the United States, children for these purposes are considered to be individuals under the age of 13. This age range may vary in other countries and regions. This age range may vary in other countries and regions. Where consent is required or recommended for a particular purpose or practice, we aim to get parental consent for youth in accordance with the age designated by the country they are in.
The Sites are controlled and operated by us from the United States.
We support the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”) and other frameworks like the General Data Protection Regulation and the so-called UK GDPR (together, the "GDPR"). Our goal is to minimize the information gathered from and disseminated about Children while permitting them active participation in the trustworthy information, education and independent voice for which we are known.
A. How We Collect and Use Information from Children
Account set-up and Maintenance. If a Child wants to register to become a member of our Sites, we require the Child to submit the following information:
- Username (the Child is advised not to use his or her real name);
- Password;
- Birth month and year; and
- Their parent’s email, which we use to ask for that parent’s consent (see Section D of this Children's Privacy Policy).
We may use information collected from Children during the registration process and in account configuration in the following manner:
- To create and maintain the Child's account;
- To determine the Child's current age and post it next to any reviews posted by the Child. We do not post the username of any Child who is under 13 or any personal information in or alongside their reviews
Using the Site. We also automatically collect "persistent identifiers" about devices from visitors. We do not collect this analytics information for logged in Children.
Use of anonymous information. If the information collected from a Child does not identify or allow contact with him or her or his or her device (including, for example, aggregated information), we may use and disclose it for any purpose, to the extent permitted by applicable law.
No advertisements! We do not display advertising based on information collected from Children.
No newsletters! Our email newsletters are for adults only – they are not designed for, or targeted at, Children. Children should not attempt to sign up for our email newsletters. We encourage parents to discuss with their Children the importance of not signing up to receive our email newsletters.
Reviews and Other Site Activities. A Child may choose to write and post reviews on the Sites, such as reviews of movies, games, websites, TV, books, and apps. We moderate all postings by Children who are under 13 to remove personal information, and we encourage parents to discuss with their Children why they should NEVER include personal information in reviews posted to the Site. Children may also participate in other online activities, such as polls. As discussed in our Privacy Policy, all members, including Children, have the ability to delete their postings to the Sites. Members can delete their postings by logging into their accounts, viewing the review or comment, and clicking the"delete" button. Or, a member can send an email requesting deletion to [email protected], noting username, date of the review or comment, and title of media type reviewed. (Parents may also delete Children's postings or other information, as described in Section E.) It is possible that deleted reviews will remain in our system (such as in backups of our data), but they will not be visible through the Sites. Please note that your request or deletion does not ensure complete or comprehensive removal of the content or information, as, for example, some of your content may have been reposted by another user.
Persistent Identifiers. When visitors interact with the Sites, certain technical information may automatically be collected, to make our Sites more interesting and useful, to track analytics, to keep them free of spam, and for various internal purposes related to our business. Examples of information that is automatically collected include: the type of computer operating system, the device's IP address or mobile device identifier, the web browser, the frequency with which the user visits various parts of our Sites, and information regarding the online or mobile service provider — however, we do not collect any of this information from or about logged-in Children. Our Cookie Policy provides additional information including a list of third party service providers who may collect persistent identifiers or use cookies, including describing Necessary Cookies which are enabled for logged-in kids and needed for the site to function. Analytics and Personalization Cookies are turned off for logged-in children. Please note non-Necessary cookies are also disabled by default for users in the EEA+.
This information is collected using technologies such as cookies, web beacons, and other unique identifiers (which we describe in more detail in our Cookie Policy). This information may be collected by us or by a third party. Persistent identifier information is used by Common Sense Media for advertisement purposes as described in the Cookie Policy and for providing support for our internal operations, including to:
- Ensure that the Sites function properly;
- Enable us to conduct research and analysis to understand, address, and improve the use and performance of the Sites; and
- Diagnose and respond to problems.
Any advertising or marketing activities are exclusively related to Common Sense services, the Common Sense Media app, and www.commonsensemedia.org, as no data is used for third-party advertising or collected on other Common Sense domains for these purposes.
B. What Information Submitted By Children Is Viewable On the Site?
We strictly limit the personal information that is publicly viewable about a member who is known by us to be a Child. When a Child posts a review or comment on the Sites, only the Child's age is posted, along with the content of the Child's posting. Usernames of Children who are under 13 are not posted with this submitted content on our Sites. Although the Child may create a Profile for his or her account (which includes only a username, password, birth month and year, and parent's email address), no portion of the Child's Profile other than the Child's age is publicly viewable.
C. What Information About Children Is Shared?
We do not disclose to third parties any Children's personal information that we collect other than as follows, consistent with applicable law: (a) with a parent's permission, (b) as required by any applicable law, (c) to third-party service providers who help us operate or manage the Sites, (d) as part of aggregated data shared with third-party service providers, our Board of Directors, funders and other partners, as described in the Privacy Policy, (e) to comply with legal process, (f) to respond to governmental requests, (g) to enforce our Terms of Service, (h) to protect our operations, (i) for assistance in fraud detection and prevention; (j) to protect the rights, privacy, safety or property of Common Sense Media, your Child or others, (k) to permit us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain, and (l) in connection with a disposition of all or a substantial portion of our business, assets or stock, such as a sale, merger, consolidation, reorganization, joint venture, assignment, or bankruptcy or similar proceedings.
D. How do we get parental consent when we are required to do so?
If parental consent is required in respect of our use of a Child’s personal information, when setting up an account, the Child must provide their parent’s email address. We use that email address to contact the Child’s parent to ask for their consent as required – we also explain to the parent:
- what personal information we collect about their Child;
- how we use it and why; and
- how the parent can revoke their consent and/or ask that we delete their Child’s account and personal information.
If at this stage, the parent gives us their consent, we will carry out the activity for which that consent was required. If not, we won’t.
E. How May Parents Access, Change or Delete Information About Their Children?
Deleting your Children’s information and their account.
If you are a parent, and we need your consent to certain processing of your Children’s personal information, if you:
- wish us to cease further collection of personal information from your Children;
- believe your Children are participating in an activity on the Site that uses their personal information without the parental consent required by law;
- wish us to make no further use of, or delete, the personal information we have collected online from your Children; and/or
- no longer wish for your Children to participate as members of the Site,
we will delete your Child’s Profile, and any parental contact information we may hold, on request.
Parents can exercise these rights through our Privacy Requests Portal or by contacting us at [email protected].
Accessing or changing your Children’s account and any personal information we have collected online.
Parents may at any time:
- access or make changes to their Children’s account; or
- make changes to the personal information that we have collected online from their children,
by clicking on their Child's "My Account" link, by contacting us at [email protected], or by writing to us at the address provided below.
For your Child's protection, we may need to verify your identity before implementing any request described in this Section E. We will try to comply with your request as soon as reasonably practicable.
F. How May Parents Raise Other Questions or Concerns?
If a parent has any questions or concerns about his or her Child's use of the Sites, we encourage the parent to contact us at [email protected] or:
Privacy Department
Common Sense Media
699 8th Street, Suite C150
San Francisco, CA 94103
415-863-0600
G. EEA+ Privacy Matters
For individuals who reside in the European Economic Area or United Kingdom (EEA+) the terms of this Policy specific to individuals in the EEA+ are set out in Section VIII (Common Sense Media: EEA+ Privacy Policy) of our Privacy Policy.