Ulla G. Foehr’s research while affiliated with Stanford University and other places

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Publications (7)


Kids and Media in America
  • Book

January 2015

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250 Reads

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165 Citations

Donald F. Roberts

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Ulla G. Foehr

Examining the full array of media available to children and adolescents, this book describes not only the amount of time they spend with each medium, but the kinds of content they choose, and the physical, social, and psychological context of much of their exposure. This national sample study provides a comprehensive picture of young people's media behavior.



Generation M[superscript 2]: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds

January 2010

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5,030 Reads

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652 Citations

This study is one of the largest and most comprehensive publicly available sources of information on the amount and nature of media use among American youth: (1) It includes a large national sample of more than 2,000 young people from across the country; (2) It covers children from ages 8 to 18, to track changes from childhood through the transitional "tween" period, and on into the teenage years; (3) It explores a comprehensive array of media, including TV, computers, video games, music, print, cell phones, and movies; (4) It is one of the only studies to measure and account for media multitasking--the time young people spend using more than one medium concurrently; and (5) It gathers highly detailed information about young people's media behavior, including responses to an extensive written questionnaire completed by the entire sample, plus results from a subsample of approximately 700 respondents who also maintained week-long diaries recording their media use in half-hour increments. Finally, because this is the third wave of the Kaiser Family Foundation's studies of children's media use, it not only provides a detailed look at current media use patterns among young people, but also documents changes in children's media habits since the first two waves of the study, in 1999 and 2004. It is hoped that the data provided here will offer a reliable foundation for policymakers trying to craft national media policies, parents trying to do their best to stay on top of their children's media habits, and educators, advocates and public health groups that are concerned with the impact of media on youth, and want to leverage the educational and informational potential of media in young people's lives. Appended are: (1) Tables; (2) Changes in Question Wording and Structure Over Time; (3) Toplines; and (4) Sample of Media Use Diary.



Trends in Media Use

March 2008

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1,695 Reads

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335 Citations

The Future of Children

American youth are awash in media. They have television sets in their bedrooms, personal computers in their family rooms, and digital music players and cell phones in their backpacks. They spend more time with media than any single activity other than sleeping, with the average American eight- to eighteen-year-old reporting more than six hours of daily media use. The growing phenomenon of "media multitasking"--using several media concurrently--multiplies that figure to eight and a half hours of media exposure daily. Donald Roberts and Ulla Foehr examine how both media use and media exposure vary with demographic factors such as age, race and ethnicity, and household socioeconomic status, and with psychosocial variables such as academic performance and personal adjustment. They note that media exposure begins early, increases until children begin school, drops off briefly, then climbs again to peak at almost eight hours daily among eleven- and twelve-year-olds. Television and video exposure is particularly high among African American youth. Media exposure is negatively related to indicators of socioeconomic status, but that relationship may be diminishing. Media exposure is positively related to risk-taking behaviors and is negatively related to personal adjustment and school performance. Roberts and Foehr also review evidence pointing to the existence of a digital divide--variations in access to personal computers and allied technologies by socioeconomic status and by race and ethnicity. The authors also examine how the recent emergence of digital media such as personal computers, video game consoles, and portable music players, as well as the media multitasking phenomenon they facilitate, has increased young people's exposure to media messages while leaving media use time largely unchanged. Newer media, they point out, are not displacing older media but are being used in concert with them. The authors note which young people are more or less likely to use several media concurrently and which media are more or less likely to be paired with various other media. They argue that one implication of such media multitasking is the need to reconceptualize "media exposure."



Adolescents and Media

June 2005

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138 Reads

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56 Citations

Adolescent Medicine Clinics

This chapter surveys a widely scattered empirical literature on media and adolescents. It focuses on youth from roughly 10 through 20 years old and emphasizes research on television, music, movies, magazines, and the new digital communication technologies. The chapter begins with a summary of research on media use patterns. Attention then turns to several theories that have dominated much of the work on media effects. Finally, we briefly summarize research on media effects in topic areas of particular concern to adolescence: violence and aggression, sex, substance use, and body image. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Citations (7)


... Some parents discuss media use often with their children, talking about content viewed in particular (Coyne et al., 2017;Hefner et al., 2019;Lee, 2013), termed active mediation, while other parents take a more hands-off approach. They may feel overwhelmed or are incredibly busy (Roberts & Foehr, 2004), and as a result may not have the time to create or enforce rules or expectations around children's media usage (Hefner et al., 2019). Other parents take an approach to media that includes placing rules and expectations of media usage and content on their children, termed restrictive mediation (Coyne et al., 2017;Hefner et al., 2019). ...

Reference:

Structures for Screens: Longitudinal associations between parental media rules and problematic media use in early childhood
Kids and Media in America
  • Citing Book
  • January 2015

... Young people's proximity to technology and their intensity in recreational use support this attitude differentiation (Jones & Shao, 2011). At the same time, the use of media and digital technologies for daily entertainment contributes to reinforcing attitudes toward technology (Rideout et al., 2010;Livingstone, 2008). As a result, recreational use of digital technology increases individuals' digital skills and positive attitudes towards technology, supporting young people's affinity for technology and attitude differentiation. ...

Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8–18 Year-Olds
  • Citing Technical Report
  • January 2010

... The proliferation of digital media use, together with its progressive flexibility and portability, led to a phenomenon called media multitasking. Initially described as engaging in more than one media activity at the same time, either on a single device or across multiple devices (Foehr 2006;Pilotta et al. 2004;Roberts and Foehr 2008), the evolution of this kind of behaviour has resulted into a broader definition. Nowadays, two types of media multitasking can be identified: engaging in multiple media activities simultaneously (e.g., scrolling on social media while watching a movie) and using media while doing non-media activities (e.g., watching a video while eating) (Baumgartner et al. 2014;Jeong and Hwang 2012;Wallis 2010). ...

Media multitasking among American youth: Prevalence, predictors and pairings
  • Citing Book
  • January 2006

... Students often justify device use for course-related tasks, while significant time is spent on non-course-related activities, impacting focus and potentially leading to lower academic performance (Kraushaar and Novak 2010;Rosen et al., 2013). The use of digital media is how adolescents and young adults mostly spend their time, on average more than 7.5 hours a day -which is almost equivalent to the length of a typical workday (Rideout et al., 2010). Students and young adults increase their digital media absorption by using two or more media simultaneously through multitasking, experiencing 10h and 45 minutes of media content within their 7.5 hours per day. ...

Generation M[superscript 2]: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds
  • Citing Article
  • January 2010

... Social identity (SI) is the awareness that an individual belongs to a certain social group, sharing emotions and values with other group members (Tajfel & Turner, 1979, p. 292). Music is an important part of one's personal and social identity as music listening can generate social affiliation and evoke memories of social contexts (Ho, 2015;Roberts et al., 2004). Scholars have also identified the positive relationship between social identity and information sharing online, including music sharing and knowledge sharing Shen et al., 2010). ...

Adolescents and Media
  • Citing Article
  • June 2005

Adolescent Medicine Clinics

... Music is a communicative activity which conveys moods, emotions, thoughts, impressions, philosophical or political concepts to the listener, because of its ability to communicate. According to Roberts et al. (2009) the music industry is fully aware of the relevant amount of time and money young people spend on music, as it is an activity easily accessible and highly entertaining. On average, over 10,000 hours of active music is being listened to in adolescence years alone (Roberts et al., 2009 Christenson and Roberts (1998), themes mentioned in song lyrics do, in fact, have an impact on how thoughts and emotions are expressed, among other things. ...

Adolescence, Adolescents, and Media
  • Citing Chapter
  • October 2009

... Visuals, including games, videos, films, animations, and photographs, have become a key attraction for Millennials, Generations Z and X (Roberts & Foehr, 2008). Images play a predominant role in visual communication as they offer a direct visual representation of context, eliminating the need to search for the meaning of each word to understand a text (Aiello & Parry, 2019). ...

Trends in Media Use
  • Citing Article
  • March 2008

The Future of Children