Editorial standards: how we review games, shows, and apps

Last updated October 2026

Raising Stoics publishes parent guides to games, shows, movies, apps, and toys (Is it good for kids?), explanations of age ratings (Age ratings explained), and a kids' slang dictionary. This page explains how those pages are made. It's written by Aleksei Martiushin, who runs the site; more about the author.

Facts, not verdicts

We don't call anything "safe" or "not for kids." Each page reports what official rating boards, regulators, courts, and the companies themselves say, linking to the sources for the main facts, and leaves the decision to the parent. Our own suggestions, such as the habit a child may copy and the "Try tonight" idea, are clearly separated from the facts.

Our sources, in order

• Official age ratings: the MPA (US movies), the TV Parental Guidelines, the ESRB (US games), the BBFC (UK), PEGI (Europe), the FSK and USK (Germany), and Apple's App Store ratings, quoted in their own words.
• Government and court records: regulators' press releases, attorneys general, court filings, and major news reports of them. Lawsuits are reported as filed claims, not proven facts, with the company's response and the case status where we found them.
• Company sources: official terms, help pages, and app store listings for features like chat, purchases, and parental controls.
• Independent reviewers: Common Sense Media's age guidance is included and always attributed to Common Sense Media, never presented as an official rating.
• Wikipedia, fan wikis, and social media: used only for details we can't find elsewhere, such as release dates, and cited as what they are.
• Kids' slang: dictionaries (Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster, Oxford, Cambridge) and major news outlets.

If we can't confirm something, we say so instead of guessing.

How the six risk flags work

Each guide shows a dial with six yes-or-no flags. The number is a count of facts from the sources on the page, not a safety score. There are four sets of flags:

• Games, apps, and YouTube: an official rating above age 7; contact with other players or strangers; purchases with real money; paid random items such as loot boxes; violence or scary content in the rating descriptors; government lawsuits, fines, or safety warnings.
• Movies and shows: an official rating above age 7; violence, scary content, bad language, and sexual content, drugs, or alcohol in the official rating reasons; and a rating of 12 or higher in the UK or Germany. Reasons marked mild, very mild, or brief don't count. For series, we use series-level ratings, not single episodes.
• Consoles and VR headsets: the store sells games or apps rated above age 7; contact with other players or strangers; purchases with real money; games with paid random items in the store; parental controls that a parent has to set up; government lawsuits, fines, or safety warnings. A console has no rating of its own, so these flags describe what it gives access to.
• Toys: the maker's age label above 7; choking or small-parts warnings on the official product; blind boxes; recalls; resale prices above retail; government warnings.

A Roblox experience inherits the Roblox platform's rating (ESRB T for Teen); lawsuits against Roblox are mentioned on the page but counted only when they target the experience itself.

How we use AI

We use AI tools, mainly Claude by Anthropic, to research and draft pages and to check them. Each guide is drafted from a research file that lists sources for the facts. Before a page is published, a separate AI reviewer checks the main claims against primary sources (rating board pages, court and government records, app store listings), and we correct what it finds. Aleksei decides what we cover, sets the rules on this page, and is responsible for everything we publish.

AI can make mistakes, which is why the main facts link to their sources and every page shows when it was checked.

Updates and corrections

Ratings, features, and court cases change. Each page shows the date it was last checked. We re-check pages from time to time, but ratings and cases can change in between, so check the linked source for anything important. If you spot an error, write to hello [at] raisingstoics [dot] com with the page and the source, and we'll correct it and update the date.

Independence

No company pays to be included or to change what we write. Our only affiliate links are to Bookshop.org, an online bookstore that shares its sales with independent bookstores: when you buy a book through one of them, we earn a small commission, and these links are marked as sponsored. Book links to Amazon earn us nothing. Which books we recommend is decided before and independently of where they can be bought. Raising Stoics is an independent project built around its 12-week program for families; no company we write about funds it.