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

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.

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.

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."

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)