Age ratings for music videos become a reality in the UK, but will they be effective?

Age ratings for music videos become a reality in the UK, but will they be effective?

A controversial measure that brings age ratings so far reserved to movies to music videos, announced by David Cameron in August 2014, will start being tested in the UK as Vevo and YouTube stated their willingness to display the warnings.

The British Board of Film Classification will be in charge of the certifications and there will be three tiers: 12, 15 and 18. These roughly correspond to the age restrictions that are used in films. 

The implementation will be patchy and may never cover all the videos released on these services, since classification is voluntary and the labels that have signed up, which include the UK arms of majors like Universal Music, Warner and Sony, won’t be submitting the videos released by their US counterparts. These include the potentially raunchy offerings by the likes of Nicki Minaj, Miley Cyrus and others. 

Vevo stated that the classification will not result in viewers being unable to watch the videos, but in time it is foreseeable that the classifications will be tied into the ‘parental controls’ now present on most operating systems and mobile devices.

As implemented today, this half-hearted measure sounds more like an election-oriented move than anything else. In spite of the relief expressed by the Media Watch group around its implementation, the breadth of new content being released every day on platforms like YouTube and the limited effectiveness of the classification on internationally-released material means that parents who are rightly concerned about the material their kids are exposed to will have to make sure they actively monitor their browsing habits. 

If parents will continue to have to monitor their kids' habits, the actual consequence of the classification may well be that kids will start specifically looking for 18-rated videos as they will be classed as "cool", which is exactly what happened when the "Parental Advisory" sticker was implemented in the USA. 

 

(Andrea Leonelli)