We teach our children to choose friends who share their values, because the people we spend time with shape who we become. Films work the same way. WatchbyValues counts how often 15 values appear in a film – good and bad – so you can see which way it leans before you press play.
As parents, we spend years teaching our children about values: be kind, tell the truth, be grateful, forgive. We tell them to choose friends who share those values, because what we're around every day slowly becomes part of us. Bad habits rub off, and so do good ones.
Yet we rarely look at screen time the same way. Children watch the same films again and again, and we don't really know what's coming across. Most films have an obvious lesson at the end. But the hour and a half leading up to it can be full of small moments – and those are what children soak up: jealousy, lying, rudeness to parents, mocking, deception, and jokes with a second meaning.
So we count them. WatchbyValues goes through every line of a film and records how often each value appears, good and bad: jealousy against contentment, lying against honesty, hatred against empathy, rudeness against respect, revenge against forgiveness. Every moment counts the same, whoever does it – rudeness is rudeness, even from the hero, and even when it's played for laughs.
You get a simple picture of what a film keeps showing your children, not just how it ends. You decide what matters most in your family. We just make sure you know what's in it.
Tap a film to see the values it shows most, its content warnings and the moments worth checking.
Not necessarily. The score doesn't decide for you – it shows you where your children might need you. Use it as a guide:
Open a film to see why it scored the way it did. Some films lean negative because the villain is cruel and the story shows that's wrong. Others lean negative because the heroes are rude or vain and it's played for laughs. The second kind usually needs more of a conversation.
Sitting with your child and talking about what's on screen does more good than banning a film or leaving it running in the background. Researchers call this active mediation. Simple questions – "Why did he do that?", "Was that fair?", "What would you have done?" – help children think about what they see instead of just soaking it up. Banning on its own can backfire: the film you won't allow becomes the one they most want to see, and they'll watch it somewhere you can't talk about it.
A few things make it work:
Children won't care much about the scores. What works is being asked what they think, and being taken seriously.
Most film reviews are opinions: someone watches a film and tells you how it felt. We count what's actually in it. We read the whole script – every line, plus the descriptions of sounds and actions – and count each time a value appears: kindness, honesty and gratitude on one side; mocking, lying, vanity and temper on the other.
Words don't always tell the whole story. A line can be sarcastic, a joke can have a second meaning, and some things are shown but never said. So we flag those moments, and a person checks each one by watching that part of the film.
The result is a clear picture of what a film keeps putting in front of your children, not just how it ends.
Early days: each film so far has been scored once, from English subtitles. Wicked is about twice as long as the others, so compare percentages rather than counts. We never publish the scripts – only what we found.
WatchbyValues isn't for everyone, and that's fine. It's for parents who don't assume every film made for children is good for them. Parents who care about what their children take in along the way, not just whether the ending has a nice lesson – and who would rather know before pressing play.
Which film or show should we score next?
From Handy Little Tools – also try DobyToday (today's jobs, by when), ListbyAisle (shopping lists, by aisle), PackbyBag (packing lists, by bag) and DueAReset (change a habit). v8