Children and Electronic Media

Children and Electronic Media VOLUME 18 NUMBER 1 SPRING 2008 3 Introducing the Issue 11 Trends in Media Use 39 Media and Young Children’s Learning 63 Media and Attention, Cognition, and School Achievement 87 Media and Children’s Aggression, Fear, and Altruism 119 Online Communication and Adolescent Relationships 147 Media and Risky Behaviors 181 Social Marketing Campaigns and Children’s Media Use 205 Children as Consumers: Advertising and Marketing 235 Children’s Media Policy A COLLABORATION OF THE WOODROW WILSON SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS AT PRINCETON UNIVERSITY AND THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION The Future of Children seeks to translate high-level research into information that is useful to policymakers, practitioners, and the media. The Future of Children is a collaboration of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and the Brookings Institution. Senior Editorial Staff Journal Staff Sara McLanahan Elisabeth Hirschhorn Donahue Editor-in-Chief Associate Editor Princeton University Princeton University Director, Center for Research on Child Wellbeing, and William S. Tod Brenda Szittya Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs Managing Editor Princeton University Ron Haskins Senior Editor Julie Clover Brookings Institution Outreach Director Senior Fellow and Co-Director, Center on Brookings Institution Children and Families Lisa Markman Christina Paxson Outreach Director Senior Editor Princeton University Princeton University Director, Center for Health and Wellbeing, and Hughes-Rogers Professor of Economics and Public Affairs Cecilia Rouse Senior Editor Princeton University Director, Education Research Section, and Theodore A. Wells ’29 Professor of Economics and Public Affairs Isabel Sawhill Senior Editor Brookings Institution Senior Fellow, Cabot Family Chair, and Co-Director, Center on Children and Families The Future of Children would like to thank the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for their generous support. ISSN: 1550-1558 ISBN: 978-0-9814705-0-4 Board of Advisors Jeanne Brooks-Gunn Charles N. Kahn III Columbia University Federation of American Hospitals Peter Budetti Marguerite Sallee Kondracke University of Oklahoma America’s Promise—The Alliance for Youth Judith Feder Rebecca Maynard Georgetown University University of Pennsylvania William Galston Lynn Thoman Brookings Institution Corporate Perspectives University of Maryland Heather B. Weiss Jean B. Grossman Harvard University Public/Private Ventures Princeton University Amy Wilkins Education Reform Now Kay S. Hymowitz Manhattan Institute for Policy Research The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent the views of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University or the Brookings Institution. The Future of Children is copyrighted by Princeton University, all rights reserved. Authorization to photocopy articles for personal use is authorized by The Future of Children. Reprinting is also allowed, so long as the journal article is properly given this attribution: “From The Future of Children, a collaboration of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and the Brookings Institution.” It is the current policy of the journal not to charge for reprinting, but this policy is subject to change. To purchase a print copy, access free electronic copies, or sign up for our e-newsletter, go to our website, www.futureofchildren.org. If you would like additional information about the journal, please send questions to [email protected]. VOLUME 18 NUMBER 1 SPRING 2008 Children and Electronic Media 3 Introducing the Issue by Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Elisabeth Hirschhorn Donahue 11 Trends in Media Use by Donald F. Roberts and Ulla G. Foehr 39 Media and Young Children’s Learning by Heather L. Kirkorian, Ellen A. Wartella, and Daniel R. Anderson 63 Media and Attention, Cognition, and School Achievement by Marie Evans Schmidt and Elizabeth A. Vandewater 87 Media and Children’s Aggression, Fear, and Altruism by Barbara J. Wilson 119 Online Communication and Adolescent Relationships by Kaveri Subrahmanyam and Patricia Greenfield 147 Media and Risky Behaviors by Soledad Liliana Escobar-Chaves and Craig A. Anderson 181 Social Marketing Campaigns and Children’s Media Use by W. Douglas Evans 205 Children as Consumers: Advertising and Marketing by Sandra L. Calvert 235 Children’s Media Policy by Amy B. Jordan www.futureofchildren.org Introducing the Issue Introducing the Issue Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Elisabeth Hirschhorn Donahue edia technology is an television and can use a cell phone to surf the integral part of children’s Internet. Children, particularly adolescents, lives in the twenty-first thus have almost constant access to media— century. The world of often at times and in places where adult electronic media, how- supervision is absent. As a result, America’s Mever, is changing dramatically. Television, young people spend more time using media which dominated the media world through than they do engaging in any single activity the mid-1990s, now competes in an arena other than sleeping. crowded with cell phones, iPods, video games, instant messaging, interactive multi- What do researchers know about how children player video games, virtual reality sites, Web and youth use electronic media and about social networks, and e-mail. how that use influences their lives? Is media technology a boon, one that leaves American American children are exposed to all these children today better educated, more socially media and more. The vast majority of children connected, and better informed than any have access to multiple media. Virtually all previous generation of the nation’s children? have television and radio in their homes, and Or is it, as many voices warn, a hazard for half have a television in their bedrooms. Most vulnerable children—an endless source of have Internet and video game access, and a advertising, portrayals of violence, and significant portion has a cell phone and an opportunities for dangerous encounters with iPod. The numbers joining social networking strangers and possible exposure to pornogra- websites like Facebook and MySpace grow phy? The quantity and quality of research on daily. Technological convergence, a hallmark these questions are uneven. Researchers have of media use today, enables youth to access amassed a vast amount of solid information on the same source from different, often por- older technologies, such as television and table, media platforms. Thanks to conver- movies. But investigations of newer technolo- gence, a teen can watch a television show on gies and of the novel uses of existing technolo- a computer long after the show has aired on gies are far fewer in number and more www.futureofchildren.org Jeanne Brooks-Gunn is the Virginia and Leonard Marx Professor of Child Development and Education at Teachers College and the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University. Elisabeth Hirschhorn Donahue is associate editor of The Future of Children and a lecturer at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. VOL. 18 / NO. 1 / SPRING 2008 3 Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Elisabeth Hirschhorn Donahue speculative in their findings. The pervasive- media, its “message,” is simply beside the ness of electronic media in the lives of point—that in electronic media, unlike print children makes it important for policymakers, media, “the medium is the message.” This educators, parents, and advocates to know volume comes to a rather different conclu- what researchers have discovered, as well as sion. Content, it turns out, is critical to how what questions remain unanswered. media influence children. Key findings from each of the articles in the volume follow. This volume focuses on the most common forms of electronic media in use today and Children’s Use of Electronic Media analyzes their influence on the well-being of How do children and youth access available children and adolescents. To address questions media today, and how has their media use raised by the proliferation of new electronic changed in the past twenty-five years? The media, we invited a panel of experts to review first task in investigating the effects of the best available evidence on whether and electronic media is to examine what forms of how exposure to different media forms is media children and youth use and how and linked with such aspects of child well-being as how often they use them. Donald Roberts, of school achievement, cognition, engagement in Stanford University’s Department of Com- extracurricular activities, social interaction munication, and Ulla Foehr, a media research with peers and family, aggression, fear and consultant specializing in children and media anxiety, risky behaviors, and healthy lifestyle use, lead off the volume by presenting data choices. Because how children fare in each of on media use and comparing current and past these areas is influenced by multiple forms of patterns of use. Where possible, they break media and even by interactions between down access and use trends by gender, age, different media, we organized the volume by and socioeconomic and racial differences. children’s outcomes rather than by media platforms. We also asked the authors of the One key finding is that children’s simultane- articles in the volume to consider evidence

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