Imagine sitting with a bunch of friends, watching a new Netflix show and you see a pop-up message on your screen which says “TV 14”. You must be intrigued to know what it means!
Meaning of TV 14
The TV 14 pop-up means that the content you are currently watching contains some material that the majority of parents would deem unsuitable for children of age 14 and below.
Reasons, why the content may be flagged as inappropriate for younger audiences, can be, the use of coarse and abusive language, scenes containing intense violence, or scenes containing intense sexual situations.
A major example of a show which has been rated as a TV 14 show is Game Of Thrones. TV 14-rated shows are more or less similar to PG-13-rated movies.
TV Parental Guideline ratings
Ever since last two to three decades, most TV shows we encounter are either too violent or contain some explicit content which is in no world suitable for young minds.
To tackle this growing concern of parents and guardians, The US government, back in the year 1996, came up with the concept of providing ratings to TV shows and movies so that parents can monitor and analyze what content their kids are consuming. The ratings gave parents the ability to filter out the content unfit for their younger ones.
Majority of the time these ratings are presented at the start of a show or a movie so the viewer can decide if they want to go on with the show. These pop-ups help in alerting people about the content they are about to consume.
Some alerts people might get are:
TV-Y rating
This rating means that the content you are watching is appropriate for younger audiences and is free from any foul language or sexually explicit content.
TV-Y7 FV rating
This rating is given to the content which is appropriate for children of ages 7 and above. This means that the content you are watching might need the audience to have acquired basic senses so they can understand what is being shown is fictional and not real life.
FV used in this rating can be understood as “fantasy violence” and these shows might contain scenes that have mild fictional violence.
TV-G
This rating is given to shows which are considered to be appropriate for people of all ages. There is no guarantee that younger audiences might enjoy or understand these shows but they are eligible to view this show because these shows have featured little to no coarse language or sexual situations.
TV-PG
This rating signifies that the content is not advisable to be consumed by audiences below the age of 7 years old. They might contain some moderate violence which could affect children below 7.
TV-14
TV-14 is the rating that alerts most parents that the material that their children are about to consume is not suitable for their age. It is a warning for them to understand that the following content might contain strong foul language, abusive dialogue, intense violence, or even nudity.
TV-MA
This rating is an alert that the content you are about to consume is highly inappropriate for children as well as teenagers of age 17 and below. This content is suitable for adults only and programs with this rating can be highly inappropriate for kids to watch as they might contain intense graphic violence, sexually explicit content, and crudely abusive language.
Content descriptors of TV Parental Guideline
From all the ratings we have discussed above, we can very well understand that the descriptors to describe the rating of a program are broadly based on: mild or strong violence, coarse language, and sexual content.
Once they analyze the extent to which these three descriptors have been used in a TV series or a movie, they are assigned their final Parental rating. So if a show has no sexually explicit content but does have some intense graphical violence, it would still be flagged as TV-14 content.
To broadly summarise these content descriptors, they are depicted as single alphabets as follows:
- D – Sexually explicit dialogue
- L – Coarse or abusive language
- S – Sexual situations
- V – Violence
Every parent has a different style of restricting the content their children consume and hence these descriptors give parents the liberty to choose what they want their children to consume or not. For instance, some people might be okay with letting their young teenagers see some sexual dialogue but might want to restrict any kind of sexual situations, so they can look for descriptors D and S.
Some renowned TV 14 shows
Tv 14 shows comprise a wide spectrum that encompasses many different kinds of shows which might be deemed inappropriate for children below the age of 14.
To name a few Tv-14 rated shows:
- Friends
- Grey’s Anatomy
- The Office
- NCIS
- How I Met Your Mother
- Virgin River
- The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
- The Umbrella Academy
- Suits
- Lost
- The Black List
- The Mandalorian
- This is Us
- The Vampire Diaries
- The X-Files
- Stranger things
One might observe that most of the shows mentioned above have a number of seasons and episodes and the TV 14 rating is a wide spectrum of the generalized rating given to the whole show, not considering the level of inappropriate content from one episode to another.
TV-14 vs PG-13 rating
To a layman, both Tv 14 and PG 13 might seem identical ratings but they are not so similar, let us take you through their fundamental differences but first let us go through their definitions:
- TV-14: Tv 14 rating is given to content that is found to be unsuitable for children below the age of 14. These programs are flagged to be TV 14 considering the amount of coarse language and sexual scenes or even intense violence.
- PG-13: When this rating pops up, this means that parents or guardians are strongly advised to refrain from allowing their children of age 13 and below to consume the following content. This content might contain the use of foul language, sexual situations, or even promote drug usage.
But there are a few points of differentiation between the ratings:
- The PG 13 rating is basically a rating given to movies and not to TV shows, unlike TV 14 which is a TV rating system.
- Another difference between the two is that the TV 14 rating is for children below 14 while PG 13 is for children below 13 years of age.
Ultimately, it is upon the parents’ discretion which content is OK for their children and what age and these ratings can just warn them.
How to stop kids below the age of 14 from watching TV 14 show
In today’s times, every TV show or movie comes with parental control options and people can use them to set their viewing choices just how they want them to be. In most cases, these parental control options vary with the TV model you are using.
The first simple solution to understand all about parental controls is to youtube about them and learn the steps. To still give you a basic idea, there are three essential levels of parental control that you can apply to prevent your young ones to consume TV 14 content:
- You can apply Cable/broadcasting parental controls
- You can apply parental controls on the Smart TV app store
- You can even apply parental controls to the app itself
With the recent arrival of smart TVs in the market, managing the content your children consume has become a cumbersome task. Back in the times of cable TV, one just had to block the channels which feature TV 14 content and that’s it!
But smart TVs have given the liberty of streaming varied content from various sources with just a few clicks and that makes it easier for kids to access TV 14 content hence strict parental controls should be in place.
The most common example of the use of parental controls can be Netflix where you can set different parental restrictions on different profiles and have control over your child’s profile and viewing history.
Conclusion
As we read in this write-up, the TV 14 rating means that the Tv show or the program you are about to watch is unsuitable for kids below the age of 14 and hence it is advised for parents to refrain their children from watching it.
These programs are likely to feature the use of sexually explicit dialogue, graphic violence, or intense sexual scenes.
We also read that TV 14 is somewhat similar to PG 13-rated movies but there is a greater probability that the TV 14 rated show has a bit stronger language, violence, or sexual situations than PG 13. Famous Shows like How I Met Your Mother and The Office have been rated as TV 14 shows.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are TV-14-rated shows appropriate for kids?
Ans: TV 14-rated shows are not considered to be suitable for children below the age of 14.
Do cinemas follow a very strict age policy?
Ans: Age ratings are given with movies to advise parents that this content is inappropriate for a certain age group but the rest is upon the parents.
