Children and Young Audiences Animation Films: Welcome to YARS (Young Audience Rating System)

Children's animation and young audience films are always a headache for directors, producers, and festival programmers; not the content per se (which is very welcome), but their age classification. Unlike US studio films (which meticulously map very specific audiences down to tiny plot details), independent animation directors are more diverse, both nationally and aesthetically. This diversity brings richness, but the need to address children's audiences with age-appropriate films still remains.

Enter YARS (Young Audience Rating System), the brainchild of media psychologist and Head of Children’s & Youth Programme at RTV Slovenija, Martina Peštaj. YARS is part of the online Animation HUB project (a CEE Animation initiative). The system categorizes young audiences into 5 categories.

• TODDLERS (1-3 years)
• EARLY CHILDHOOD ((4-6 years)
• MIDDLE CHILDHOOD (7-9 years)
• LATE CHILDHOOD (10-12 years)
• EARLY ADOLESCENCE (13-15 years)
• LATE ADOLESCENCE (16-20 years)

It configures parameters such as the developmental stage, attention span, responsiveness to story elements (e.g. parody, meta-references), emotional sensitivity and responsiveness to certain design elements and not others.

 Over the years, creators often consulted me: “I work for children, but I don’t know much about this age group and their psychological profile.” The standard reference literature is highly specialised, so I started combining elements from different books in a way that creators could understand. For this project, I gathered all that information – the results, systematically covering several categories (story & content, emotional sensitivity, design, and more) for each developmental stage - Martina Peštaj, Source

The scheme is tailored to independent animation authors, and it doesn't just aim to 'protect children from harmful content' but more positively to provide them with age-appropriate animation films and series.

• Download the full YARS classification

YARS is part of theonline Animation HUB project, an initiative of CEE Animation (here supported by Creative Europe).