Plugged In

by Patti M Valkenburg

  5. Children

  1. Sue Howard, “Unbalanced Minds? Children Thinking about Television,” in Wired-Up: Young People and the Electronic Media, ed. Sue Howard (London: UCL Press, 1998).

  2. Daniel R. Anderson, Elizabeth Pugzles Lorch, Diane E. Field, Patricia A. Collins, and John G. Nathan, “Television Viewing at Home: Age Trends in Visual Attention and Time with TV,” Child Development 57 (1986).

  3. Victoria J. Rideout, Zero to Eight: Children’s Media Use in America (San Francisco: Common Sense Media, 2013); Ofcom, Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes Report (London: Ofcom, 2014).

  4. Paul E. McGhee, Humor: Its Origin and Development (San Francisco: Freeman, 1979).

  5. William Kotzwinkle and Glenn Murray, Walter the Farting Dog (Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 2001); Tara Gomi, Everyone Poops (La Jolla, Calif.: Kane/Miller, 1993).

  6. Victoria J. Rideout, Learning at Home: Families’ Educational Media Use in America (New York: Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, 2014).

  7. Justin F. Martin, “Children’s Attitudes toward Superheroes as a Potential Indicator of Their Moral Understanding,” Journal of Moral Education 36 (2007).

  8. Cynthia Hoffner and Joanne Cantor, “Perceiving and Responding to Mass Media Characters,” in Responding to the Screen: Reception and Reaction Processes, ed. Jennings Bryant and Dolf Zillmann (Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1991).

  9. Ellen Seiter, “Children’s Desires / Mothers’ Dilemmas: The Social Contexts of Consumption,” in The Children’s Culture Reader, ed. Henry Jenkins (New York: New York University Press, 2006).

  10. Dorothy Z. Ullian, “The Development of Conceptions of Masculinity and Femininity,” in Exploring Sex Differences, ed. Barbara B. Lloyd and John E. Archer (Oxford: Academic Press, 1976).

  11. Carol J. Auster and Claire S. Mansbach, “The Gender Marketing of Toys: An Analysis of Color and Type of Toy on the Disney Store Website,” Sex Roles 67, no. 7 (2012).

  12. Moniek Buijzen and Patti M. Valkenburg, “Appeals in Advertising Aimed at Children and Adolescents,” Communications 27, no. 3 (2002).

  13. Daniel S. Acuff and Robert H. Reiher, What Kids Buy and Why: The Psychology of Marketing to Kids (New York: Free Press, 1997).

  14. Victoria J. Rideout, Ulla G. Foehr, and Donald F. Roberts, Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds (Menlo Park, Calif.: Kaiser Family Foundation, 2010).

  15. Kristi S. Lekies and Thomas H. Beery, “Everyone Needs a Rock: Collecting Items from Nature in Childhood,” Children, Youth, and Environments 23, no. 3 (2013).

  16. Jackie Marsh, “Young Children’s Play in Online Virtual Worlds,” Journal of Early Childhood Research 8, no. 1 (2010).

  17. Keith W. Mielke, “Formative Research on Appeal and Comprehension in 3-2-1 Contact,” in Children’s Understanding of Television: Research on Attention and Comprehension, ed. Jennings Bryant and Daniel R. Anderson (Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1983).

  18. Ranjana Das, “‘I’ve Walked This Street’: Readings of ‘Reality’ in British Young People’s Reception of Harry Potter,” Journal of Children and Media (2016).

  19. Barrie Gunter, Jill L. McAleer, and Brian R. Clifford, Children’s View about Television (Aldershot, UK: Avebury, 1991).

  20. Robert L. Selman, The Growth of Interpersonal Understanding: Developmental and Clinical Analyses (New York: Academic Press, 1980).

  21. Linda Sheldon and Milica Loncar, Kids Talk TV: “Super Wickid” or “Dum” (Sidney: Australian Broadcasting Authority, 1996).

  22. Acuff and Reiher, What Kids Buy and Why.

  23. Patti M. Valkenburg and Karin E. Soeters, “Children’s Positive and Negative Experiences with the Internet: An Exploratory Survey,” Communication Research 28, no. 5 (2001).

  24. Tilo Hartmann and Christoph Klimmt, “Gender and Computer Games: Exploring Females’ Dislikes,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 11, no. 4 (2006).

  25. Acuff and Reiher, What Kids Buy and Why.

  6. Adolescents

  Epigraph: This quote circulates widely in educational institutions and on the Web; it is an edited compilation of a part of Plato’s dialogue The Republic.

  1. Amanda Lenhart, Teens, Social Media, and Technology Overview 2015 (Washington, D.C.: Pew Research Center, 2015).

  2. These data are based on our ongoing survey study among Dutch teenagers ages eleven to fifteen; our Dutch statistics (gathered in 2014) do not diverge significantly from those reported in other industrialized countries.

  3. David C. Sinclair and Peter Dangerfield, Human Growth after Birth, vol. 6 (London: Oxford Univiversity Press, 1998).

  4. Daniel J. Siegel, Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain (New York: Penguin, 2013).

  5. Signe Bray, Mark Krongold, Cassandra Cooper, and Catherine Lebel, “Synergistic Effects of Age on Patterns of White and Gray Matter Volume across Childhood and Adolescence,” eNeuro 2, no. 4 (2015).

  6. Eveline A. Crone and Ronald E. Dahl, “Understanding Adolescence as a Period of Social-Affective Engagement and Goal Flexibility,” Nature Reviews of Neuroscience 13, no. 9 (2012).

  7. Daniel S. Acuff and Robert H. Reiher, What Kids Buy and Why: The Psychology of Marketing to Kids (New York: Free Press, 1997).

  8. American estimates: Victoria J. Rideout, Ulla G. Foehr, and Donald F. Roberts, Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds (Menlo Park, Calif.: Kaiser Family Foundation, 2010); Dutch estimates: Hilde A. M. Voorveld and Margot van der Goot, “Age Differences in Media Multitasking: A Diary Study,” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 57, no. 3 (2013).

  9. Ann S. Masten, “Humor and Competence in School-Aged Children,” Child Development 57, no. 2 (1986).

  10. Nel Warnars-Kleverlaan, Louis Oppenheimer, and Larry Sherman, “To Be or Not to Be Humorous: Does It Make a Difference?,” Humor 9, no. 2 (1996).

  11. Laurence Steinberg, Adolescence, vol. 9 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011).

  12. Siegel, Brainstorm.

  13. Natalie Kretsch and Kathryn P. Harden, “Pubertal Development and Peer Influence on Risky Decision Making,” Journal of Early Adolescence 34, no. 3 (2014).

  14. Siegel, Brainstorm.

  15. Laurence Steinberg, “Risk Taking in Adolescence: New Perspectives from Brain and Behavioral Science,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 16, no. 2 (2007).

  16. Susanne E. Baumgartner, Sindy R. Sumter, Jochen Peter, Patti M. Valkenburg, and Sonia Livingstone, “Does Country Context Matter? Investigating the Predictors of Teen Sexting across Europe,” Computers in Human Behavior 34 (2014).

  17. Angela Huebner, “Teen Social and Emotional Development,” in Families Matter! A Series for Parents of School-Age Youth, ed. Pat T. Nelson (Neward, Del.: Cooperative Extension, University of Delaware, 2012).

  18. Patti M. Valkenburg and Jochen Peter, “Online Communication among Adolescents: An Integrated Model of Its Attraction, Opportunities, and Risks,” Journal of Adolescent Health 48, no. 2 (2011).

  19. Susan Harter, The Construction of the Self: A Developmental Perspective, 2nd ed. (New York: Guilford, 2012).

  20. David Elkind, “Egocentrism in Adolescence,” Child Development 38, no. 4 (1967).

  21. Jane D. Brown and Carol J. Pardun, “Little in Common: Racial and Gender Differences in Adolescents’ Television Diets,” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 48, no. 2 (2004).

  22. Herbert Blumer, Movies and Conduct (New York: Macmillan, 1933).

  23. Lenhart, Teens, Social Media and Technology Overview 2015.

  24. Patti M. Valkenburg, Alexander P. Schouten, and Jochen Peter, “Adolescents’ Identity Experiments on the Internet,” New Media and Society 7, no. 3 (2005).

  25. Steinberg, Adolescence.

  26. Huebner, “Teen Social and Emotional Development.”

  27. Ibid.

  28. Sindy R. Sumter, Patti M. Valkenburg, and Jochen Peter, “Perceptions of Love across the Lifespan: Differences in Passion, Intimacy, and Commitment,” International Journal of Beh
avioral Development 37, no. 5 (2013).

  29. Sara Magee, “High School Is Hell: The TV Legacy of Beverly Hills, 90210 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” Journal of Popular Culture 47, no. 4 (2014).

  30. Valkenburg and Peter, “Online Communication among Adolescents.”

  31. Johanna M. F. van Oosten, Jochen Peter, and Inge Boot, “Exploring Associations between Exposure to Sexy Online Self-Presentations and Adolescents’ Sexual Attitudes and Behavior,” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 44, no. 5 (2014).

  32. For example, American data similarly indicate that 50 percent of adolescents reported actively seeking sexual content in their media choices; see Amy Bleakley, Michael Hennessy, and Martin Fishbein, “A Model of Adolescents’ Seeking of Sexual Content in Their Media Choices,” Journal of Sex Research 48, no. 4 (2010).

  33. Van Oosten, Peter, and Boot, “Sexy Online Self-Presentations.”

  34. Gary W. Harper, Pedro Serrano, Douglas Bruce, and Jose Arturo Bauermeister, “The Internet’s Multiple Roles in Facilitating the Sexual Orientation Identity Development of Gay and Bisexual Male Adolescents,” American Journal of Men’s Health (2015).

  35. Aneeta Rattan and Nalini Ambady, “How ‘It Gets Better’: Effectively Communicating Support to Targets of Prejudice,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 40, no. 5 (2014); Brian Stelter, “Campaign Offers Help to Gay Youths,” New York Times, October 18, 2010.

  36. Siegel, Brainstorm.

  37. Steinberg, “Risk Taking in Adolescence.”

  38. Harter, Construction of the Self.

  39. Kelly L. Schmitt, Shoshana Dayanim, and Stacey Matthias, “Personal Homepage Construction as an Expression of Social Development,” Developmental Psychology 44, no. 2 (2008): 496.

  40. American estimates: Lawrence B. Finer and Jesse M. Philbin, “Sexual Initiation, Contraceptive Use, and Pregnancy among Young Adolescents,” Pediatrics 131, no. 5 (2013); for European estimates, see Aubrey Spriggs Madkour et al., “Macro-Level Age Norms for the Timing of Sexual Initiation and Adolescents’ Early Sexual Initiation in 17 European Countries,” Journal of Adolescent Health 55, no. 1 (2014).

  41. Melanie J. Zimmer-Gembeck and Mark Helfand, “Ten Years of Longitudinal Research on U.S. Adolescent Sexual Behavior: Developmental Correlates of Sexual Intercourse, and the Importance of Age, Gender and Ethnic Background,” Developmental Review 28, no. 2 (2008).

  7. Media and Violence

  Epigraph: PBS Newshour, “Can Violent Video Games Play a Role in Violent Behavior,” http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/social_issues-jan-june13-videogames_02-19.

  1. Nancy Rappaport and Christopher Thomas, “Recent Research Findings on Aggressive and Violent Behavior in Youth: Implications for Clinical Assessment and Intervention,” Journal of Adolescent Health 35, no. 4 (2004).

  2. John P. Murray, “Media Violence and Children: Applying Research to Advocacy,” in Child and Family Advocacy, ed. Anne McDonald Culp (New York: Springer, 2013).

  3. Joanne Savage and Christina Yancey, “The Effects of Media Violence Exposure on Criminal Aggression: A Meta-Analysis,” Criminal Justice and Behavior 35, no. 6 (2008).

  4. Ibid., 773.

  5. Sarah M. Coyne and John Archer, “Indirect Aggression in the Media: A Content Analysis of British Television Programs,” Aggressive Behavior 30, no. 3 (2004).

  6. See, for example, Sarah M. Coyne, John Archer, and Mike Eslea, “Cruel Intentions on Television and in Real Life: Can Viewing Indirect Aggression Increase Viewers’ Subsequent Indirect Aggression?,” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 88, no. 3 (2004); Douglas A. Gentile, Sarah Coyne, and David A. Walsh, “Media Violence, Physical Aggression, and Relational Aggression in School Age Children: A Short-Term Longitudinal Study,” Aggressive Behavior 37, no. 2 (2011).

  7. Christopher P. Barlett, Craig A. Anderson, and Edward L. Swing, “Video Game Effects—Confirmed, Suspected, and Speculative: A Review of the Evidence,” Simulation and Gaming 40, no. 3 (2009); but also see, for example: Christopher R. Engelhardt, Micah O. Mazurek, Joseph Hilgard, Jeffrey N. Rouder, and Bruce D. Bartholow, “Effects of Violent-Video-Game Exposure on Aggressive Behavior, Aggressive-Thought Accessibility, and Aggressive Affect among Adults with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder,” Psychological Science 26, no. 8 (2015).

  8. Jacques-Philippe Leyens, Leoncio Camino, Ross D. Parke, and Leonard Berkowitz, “Effects of Movie Violence on Aggression in a Field Setting as a Function of Group Dominance and Cohesion,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 32, no. 2 (1975).

  9. Craig A. Anderson et al., “Violent Video Game Effects on Aggression, Empathy, and Prosocial Behavior in Eastern and Western Countries: A Meta-Analytic Review,” Psychological Bulletin 136, no. 2 (2010).

  10. Leonard D. Eron, L. Rowell Huesmann, Monroe M. Lefkowitz, and Leopold O. Walder, “Does Television Violence Cause Aggression?,” American Psychologist 27, no. 4 (1972).

  11. Michael D. Slater, Kimberly L. Henry, Randall C. Swaim, and Joe M. Cardador, “Vulnerable Teens, Vulnerable Times: How Sensation Seeking, Alienation, and Victimization Moderate the Violent Media Content-Aggressiveness Relation,” Communication Research 31, no. 6 (2004).

  12. As discussed in Savage and Yancey, “The Effects of Media Violence Exposure on Criminal Aggression,” meta-analyses may overestimate effect sizes because of problems such as publication bias, the mixed quality of the studies included, and problems with statistical reporting.

  13. Haejung Paik and George Comstock, “The Effects of Television Violence on Antisocial Behavior: A Meta-Analysis,” Communication Research 21, no. 4 (1994).

  14. Craig A. Anderson and Brad J. Bushman, “Effects of Violent Video Games on Aggressive Behavior, Aggressive Cognition, Aggressive Affect, Physiological Arousal, and Prosocial Behavior: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Scientific Literature,” Psychological Science 12, no. 5 (2001); John L. Sherry, “The Effects of Violent Video Games on Aggression: A Meta-Analysis,” Human Communication Research 27, no. 3 (2001); Christopher J. Ferguson and John Kilburn, “The Public Health Risks of Media Violence: A Meta-Analytic Review,” Journal of Pediatrics 154, no. 5 (2009); Anderson et al., “Violent Video Game Effects”; Tobias Greitemeyer and Dirk O. Muegge, “Video Games Do Affect Social Outcomes: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Effects of Violent and Prosocial Video Game Play,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 40, no. 5 (2014).

  15. Coyne, Archer, and Eslea, “Cruel Intentions on Television”; Gentile, Coyne, and Walsh, “Media Violence, Physical Aggression, and Relational Aggression.”

  16. Savage and Yancey, “The Effects of Media Violence Exposure on Criminal Aggression.”

  17. Tom Grimes, James A. Anderson, and Lori Bergen, Media Violence and Aggression: Science and Ideology (Los Angeles: Sage, 2008).

  18. Anderson et al., “Violent Video Game Effects.”

  19. Christopher J. Ferguson and John Kilburn, “Much Ado about Nothing: The Misestimation and Overinterpretation of Violent Video Game Effects in Eastern and Western Nations; Comment on Anderson et al. (2010),” Psychological Bulletin 136, no. 2 (2010).

  20. Albert Bandura, “Influence of Models’ Reinforcement Contingencies on the Acquisition of Imitative Responses,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1, no. 6 (1965).

  21. Albert Bandura, Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1986).

  22. Ronald S. Drabman and Margaret H. Thomas, “Does Media Violence Increase Children’s Toleration of Real-Life Aggression?,” Developmental Psychology 10, no. 3 (1974).

  23. Daniel Linz, Edward Donnerstein, and Steven Penrod, “The Effects of Multiple Exposures to Filmed Violence against Women,” Journal of Communication 34, no. 3 (1984).

  24. Maren Strenziok et al., “Fronto-Parietal Regulation of Media Violence Exposure in Adolescents: A Multi-Method Study,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 6, no. 5 (2010).

  25. Brad J. Bushman and L. Rowell Huesmann, “Effects of Televised Violence on Aggression,” i
n Handbook of Children and the Media, ed. Dorothy G. Singer and Jerome L. Singer (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 2001).

  26. L. Rowell Huesmann, Jessica Moise-Titus, Cheryl-Lynn Podolski, and Leonard D. Eron, “Longitudinal Relations between Children’s Exposure to TV Violence and Their Aggressive and Violent Behavior in Young Adulthood, 1977–1992,” Developmental Psychology 39, no. 2 (2003).

  27. Leonard Berkowitz, “Some Effects of Thoughts on Anti- and Prosocial Influences of Media Events: A Cognitive-Neoassociation Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 95, no. 3 (1984).

  28. Brad J. Bushman, “Priming Effects of Media Violence on the Accessibility of Aggressive Constructs in Memory,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 24, no. 5 (1998).

  29. Dolf Zillmann, “Attribution and Misattribution of Excitatory Reactions,” in New Directions in Attribution Research, ed. John H. Harvey, William Ickes, and Robert F. Kidd (Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1978).

  30. Brad J. Bushman and Craig A. Anderson, “Violent Video Games and Hostile Expectations: A Test of the General Aggression Model,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28, no. 12 (2002).

  31. Paik and Comstock, “Effects of Television Violence on Antisocial Behavior”; Barbara J. Wilson et al., “Violence in Television Programming Overall,” in National Television Violence Study 2, ed. Center for Communication and Social Policy (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1998); Bandura, “Influence of Models’ Reinforcement Contingencies”; Marina Krcmar and Patti M. Valkenburg, “A Scale to Assess Children’s Moral Interpretations of Justified and Unjustified Violence and Its Relationship to Television Viewing,” Communication Research 26, no. 5 (1999); Anderson et al., “Violent Video Game Effects.”

  32. Paik and Comstock, “Effects of Television Violence on Antisocial Behavior.”

  33. Ibid.

  34. Patti M. Valkenburg and Jochen Peter, “The Differential Susceptibility to Media Effects Model,” Journal of Communication 63, no. 2 (2013).

  35. George Gerbner, Larry Gross, Michael Morgan, and Sylvia Signorielli, “The ‘Mainstreaming’ of America: Violence Profile No. 11,” Journal of Communication 30, no. 3 (1980).