Children & Media

Taking a global and interdisciplinary approach, Children and Media explores the role of modern media, including the internet, television, mobile media and video games, in the development of children, adolescents, and childhood. Children and Media is the definitive overview of the intersection of children and media, which provides a sweeping picture of the field from the accumulated interdisciplinary and global literature of the past 60 years. The text is a comprehensive integration of different theoretical traditions and research practices, and one of the only books on the market to cover both critical qualitative and quantitative approaches to the topic. It brings together developmental psychology, cultural studies, sociology of childhood and health studies, among others, providing an understanding of the roles media have in the changing nature of childhoods around the world. Lemish covers the entire scope of media that children are exposed to, including television, internet, video games and mobile media. With a distinctively international and accessible approach, Children and Media balances the need to contextualize media in children’s lives in their unique cultural spaces, as well as searching for universal understandings that hold true for children and youth around the world. In so doing, it avoids a judgemental approach as to whether media are good or bad for children, and instead focuses on their unique uses, roles, and meanings in children’s everyday lives, offering readers a thorough understanding of the nature of today’s childhoods.