Digital Youth


Book Description

Youth around the world are fittingly described as digital natives because of their comfort and skill with technological hardware and content. Recent studies indicate that an overwhelming majority of children and teenagers use the Internet, cell phones, and other mobile devices. Equipped with familiarity and unprecedented access, it is no wonder that adolescents consume, create, and share copious amounts of content. But is there a cost? Digital Youth: The Role of Media in Development recognizes the important role of digital tools in the lives of teenagers and presents both the risks and benefits of these new interactive technologies. From social networking to instant messaging to text messaging, the authors create an informative and relevant guidebook that goes beyond description to include developmental theory and implications. Also woven throughout the book is an international sensitivity and understanding that clarifies how, despite the widespread popularity of digital communication, technology use varies between groups globally. Other specific topics addressed include: Sexuality on the Internet. Online identity and self-presentation. Morality, ethics, and civic engagement. Technology and health. Violence, cyberbullying, and victimization. Excessive Internet use and addictive behavior. This comprehensive volume is a must-have reference for researchers, clinicians, and graduate students across such disciplines as developmental/clinical child/school psychology, social psychology, media psychology, medical and allied health professions, education, and social work.




Children, Adolescents, and the Media


Book Description

Taking an approach grounded in the media effects tradition, this book provides a comprehensive, research-oriented treatment of how children and adolescents interact with the media. Chapters review the latest findings as well as seminal studies that have helped frame the issues in such areas as advertising, violence, video games, sexuality, drugs, body image and eating disorders, music, and the Internet. Each chapter is liberally sprinkled with illustrations, examples from the media, policy debates, and real-life instances of media impact.




Plugged in


Book Description

Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Preface -- 1 Youth and Media -- 2 Then and Now -- 3 Themes and Theoretical Perspectives -- 4 Infants, Toddlers, and Preschoolers -- 5 Children -- 6 Adolescents -- 7 Media and Violence -- 8 Media and Emotions -- 9 Advertising and Commercialism -- 10 Media and Sex -- 11 Media and Education -- 12 Digital Games -- 13 Social Media -- 14 Media and Parenting -- 15 The End -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Y -- Z




The Big Disconnect


Book Description

Wall Street Journal Best Nonfiction Pick; Publisher's Weekly Best Book of the Year Clinical psychologist Catherine Steiner-Adair takes an in-depth look at how the Internet and the digital revolution are profoundly changing childhood and family dynamics, and offers solutions parents can use to successfully shepherd their children through the technological wilderness. As the focus of the family has turned to the glow of the screen—children constantly texting their friends or going online to do homework; parents working online around the clock—everyday life is undergoing a massive transformation. Easy access to the Internet and social media has erased the boundaries that protect children from damaging exposure to excessive marketing and the unsavory aspects of adult culture. Parents often feel they are losing a meaningful connection with their children. Children are feeling lonely and alienated. The digital world is here to stay, but what are families losing with technology's gain? As renowned clinical psychologist Catherine Steiner-Adair explains, families are in crisis as they face this issue, and even more so than they realize. Not only do chronic tech distractions have deep and lasting effects but children also desperately need parents to provide what tech cannot: close, significant interactions with the adults in their lives. Drawing on real-life stories from her clinical work with children and parents and her consulting work with educators and experts across the country, Steiner-Adair offers insights and advice that can help parents achieve greater understanding, authority, and confidence as they engage with the tech revolution unfolding in their living rooms.




Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Media


Book Description

Get a quick, expert overview of the increasingly important topic of technology and social media and its impact on children and adolescents. This practical resource presents a focused summary of today's current knowledge on topics of interest to psychiatrists, pediatricians, and other health professionals working with children and adolescents. It provides current, relevant information on a wide variety of media-related topics as they relate to child and adolescent health and mental illness, making it a one-stop resource for staying up to date in this critical area. - Discusses the effects of violent media; the impact of reality TV on female body image; bullying, sexting, and other negative impact of new apps; sex in the media; media outreach for child psychiatrists; the use of telepsychiatry; the role of media in the destigmatizing of mental illness; media literacy for parents; and media portrayal of modern families. - Includes coverage of dystopian movies and YA novels; media addiction; the neuroscience of media; the use of media by preschool and young children; the use of media regarding minority populations; and more. - Consolidates today's available information on this timely topic into one convenient resource.




Family Communication in the Age of Digital and Social Media


Book Description

Family Communication in the Age of Digital and Social Media is an innovative collection of contemporary data-driven research and theorizing about how digital and social media are affecting and changing nearly every aspect of family interaction over the lifespan. The research and thinking featured in the book reflects the intense growth of interest in families in the digital age. Chapters explore communication among couples, families, parents, adolescents, and emerging adults as their realities are created, impacted, changed, structured, improved, influenced and/or inhibited by cell phones, smartphones, personal desktop and laptop computers, MP3 players, e-tablets, e-readers, email, Facebook, photo sharing, Skype, Twitter, SnapChat, blogs, Instagram, and other emerging technologies. Each chapter significantly advances thinking about how digital media have become deeply embedded in the lives of families and couples, as well as how they are affecting the very ways we as twenty-first-century communicators see ourselves and, by extension, conceive of and behave in our most intimate and longest-lasting relationships.




Children and Their Changing Media Environment


Book Description

Focusing on the meanings, uses, and impacts of new media in childhood, family life, peer culture, and the relation between home and school, this volume sets out to address many of the questions, fears, and hopes regarding the changing place of media in the lives of today's children and young people. The scholars contributing to this work argue that such questions--intellectual, empirical, and policy-related--can be productively addressed through cross-national research. Hence, this volume brings together researchers from 12 countries--Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland--to present original and comprehensive findings regarding the diffusion and significance of new media and information technologies among children. Inspired by parallels and difference between the arrival of television in the family home during the 1950s and the present day arrival of new media, the research is based on in-depth interviews and a detailed comparative survey of 6- to 16-year-olds across Europe and in Israel. The result is a comprehensive, detailed, and fascinating account of how these technologies are rapidly becoming central to the daily lives of young people. As a resource for researchers and students in media and communication studies, leisure and cultural studies, social psychology, and related areas, this volume provides crucial insights into the role of media in the lives of children. The findings included herein will also be of interest to policymakers in broadcasting, technology, and education throughout the world.




Technological Addictions


Book Description

"Technological Addictions is the first guide designed to provide insight and strategies to clinicians, patients, and families grappling with the collateral damage of technology's pervasiveness and pull. Mental health professionals are beginning to understand that video games, online pornography, internet gaming, internet gambling, and other technological pastimes can be every bit as addictive as substances such as alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drugs. Editor Petros Levounis is among the foremost experts on addiction and, together with coeditor James Sherer and a roster of prominent contributors, has created a groundbreaking book that emphasizes the lived reality of the people who struggle with these addictions every day. In 10 rigorous yet down-to-earth chapters, the book explores the psychological and cultural context of each technology and related behavior, from social media to cybersex, and examines thoroughly the difference between healthy engagement with technology and addiction. This discussion premised on the understanding that technology should not be rolled back or restricted but is an increasingly beneficial and even necessary part of modern life. Two chapters specifically focus on the way technology addictions impact particular populations, such as children and adolescents and older adults. Addiction to technology does not discriminate; no preexisting psychological or physical conditions are required, and everyone is susceptible. Technological Addictions provides guidance found nowhere else, guidance that both clinicians and laypeople will find useful and compelling"--




Living and Learning with New Media


Book Description

This report summarizes the results of an ambitious three-year ethnographic study, funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, into how young people are living and learning with new media in varied settings—at home, in after school programs, and in online spaces. It offers a condensed version of a longer treatment provided in the book Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out (MIT Press, 2009). The authors present empirical data on new media in the lives of American youth in order to reflect upon the relationship between new media and learning. In one of the largest qualitative and ethnographic studies of American youth culture, the authors view the relationship of youth and new media not simply in terms of technology trends but situated within the broader structural conditions of childhood and the negotiations with adults that frame the experience of youth in the United States. The book that this report summarizes was written as a collaborative effort by members of the Digital Youth Project, a three-year research effort funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Southern California. John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Reports on Digital Media and Learning