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J Youth Adolescence (2014) 43:20832087 DOI 10.1007/s10964-014-0208-6
BOOK REVIEW
Amy B. Jordan and Daniel Romer (eds.): Media and the Well-being of Children and Adolescents
Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 2014, 304 pp, ISBN: 978-0-19-998746-7
Tiffany Coleman
Received: 19 October 2014 / Accepted: 20 October 2014 / Published online: 26 October 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014
In Media and the Well-being of Children and Adolescents, editors Amy B. Jordan and Daniel Romer assemble a thorough compilation of theory and empirical research on the role that the media plays in the lives of youth and their families in America. The editors and contributors focus on the three Cs of media research: content, context, and child characteristics. They examine these themes rst by giving an overview of the current state of media and families, then by turning to the risks of media and its potential benets, and concluding with what the book does not cover and what areas of youth and the media need more examination and research. The goal of the volume is to present a balanced view of the benets and obstacles that media presents so that the audience, professionals and parents alike, may have a holistic perspective of media as it continues to change the world in which youth live.
The book begins with an overview of media use in American homes in chapter one. The contributors utilize the Annenberg Media Environment Study, conducted in 2012, which took a national sample of 1,550 parents with at least one child age seventeen or younger as the foundation for the overview. Traditional forms of media technologies (read televisions, computers, and video game consoles) are reported at lower numbers than previous studies predicted they would be, perhaps a nding inuenced by mobile technologies such as tablets, e-readers, handheld video game devices, and smart phones. This trend also translates to technology in childrens bedrooms. Fewer children and adolescents in the study have bedroom televisions, but the number of bedroom computers and Internet access in the bedroom is on the rise. This change does not mean that
fewer children and adolescents are viewing television in their bedrooms; they may just be accessing it in via mobile technologies instead, while also having access to social networking, instant...