New advice for ‘media moms and digital dads’: an interview with Yalda T. Uhls

With the holidays just around the corner, Alicia Blum-Ross speaks to Yalda T. Uhls about her new book Media moms and digital dads, advice for technology and gadgets as holiday gifts, and the challenges of parenting in the digital age. Alicia is a researcher at the LSE’s Department of Media and Communications. She is interested in youth media production and is part of the Parenting for a Digital Future research project

Five days at outdoor education camp without screens improves preteen skills with nonverbal emotion cues

AbstractA field experiment examined whether increasing opportunities for face-to-face interaction while eliminating the use of screen-based media and communication tools improved nonverbal emotion–cue recognition in preteens. Fifty-one preteens spent five days at an overnight nature camp where television, computers and mobile phones were not allowed; this group was compared with school-based matched controls (n=54) that retained usual media practices. Both groups took pre- and post-tests that required participants to infer emotional states from photographs of facial expressions and videotaped scenes with verbal cues removed. Change scores for the two groups were compared using gender, ethnicity, media use, and age as covariates. After five days interacting face-to-face without the use of any screen-based media, preteens’ recognition of nonverbal emotion cues improved significantly more than that of the control group for both facial expressions and videotaped scenes. Implications are that the short-term effects of increased opportunities for social interaction, combined with time away from screen-based media and digital communication tools, improves a preteen’s understanding of nonverbal emotional cues

The Rise of Fame: An Historical Content Analysis

Recent proliferation of TV programming for the tween audience is supported on the Internet with advertising, fan clubs, and other online communities. These Internet tools expand TV's potential influence on human development. Yet little is known about the kinds of values these shows portray. To explore this issue, a new method for conducting content analysis was developed; it used personality indices to measure value priorities and desire for fame in TV programming. The goal was to document historical change in the values communicated to tween audiences, age 9-11, who are major media consumers and whose values are still being formed. We analyzed the top two tween TV shows in the U.S. once a decade over a time span of 50 years, from 1967 through 2007. Greenfield's (2009a) theory of social change and human development served as the theoretical framework; it views technology, as well as urban residence, formal education, and wealth, as promoting individualistic values while diminishing communitarian or familistic ones. Fame, an individualistic value, was judged the top value in the shows of 2007, up from number fifteen (out of sixteen) in most of the prior decades. In contrast, community feeling was eleventh in 2007, down from first or second place in all prior decades. According to the theory, a variety of sociodemographic shifts, manifest in census data, could be causing these changes; however, because social change in the U.S. between 1997 and 2007 centered on the expansion of communication technologies, we hypothesize that the sudden value shift in this period is technology driven

21st century media, fame, and other future aspirations: A national survey of 9-15 year olds

Past research found that messages in popular television promote fame as a top value, while social media allow anyone to reach broad audiences (Uhls & Greenfield, 2011; Uhls & Greenfield, 2012). During a sensitive developmental phase, preteens are the largest users of media, consuming over seven-and-a-half hours a day, seven days a week, outside of school. A nationwide survey in the United States asked 315 youth (M = 12 years; range: 9 -15 years) about their media habits as well as their aspirations for the future. Participants’ answers about their future goals clustered around two factors, representing individualistic, self-focused and collectivistic, other-focused aspirations. Fame, image, money and status were items in the former; helping others in need, helping family, and living near family were items in the latter. Watching television and using a social networking site each predicted self-focused aspirations, above and beyond the influence of control variables of age and maternal education, while the two media activities together predicted a larger portion of the variance than either alone. Collectivistic, other-focused aspirations were associated with nontechnology activities, most of which had an important social component. The implication is that individualistic, self-focused aspirations are related to 21st century media, whereas more collectivistic, other-focused aspirations are related to nontechnology activities, particularly those with a social component

Benefits and Costs of Social Media in Adolescence

In 2015, American adolescents aged 13 to 18 years reported using social media 1 hour and 11 minutes a day, 7 days a week. Social media are used for a variety of activities, including sharing information, interacting with peers, and developing a coherent identity. In this review of the research, we examine how social media are intertwined with adolescent development and assess both the costs and benefits of adolescent social media use. We include suggestions for further research and recommendations for clinicians, policy makers, and educators

Investigating Viewership of Season 3 of “13 Reasons Why” and the Mental Wellness of Adolescents: Partially Randomized Preference Trial

BackgroundA conflicting body of research suggests that additional investigation is needed to understand how globally watched television shows featuring social and mental health issues, such as 13 Reasons Why, might affect adolescents’ mental wellness. ObjectiveThis study aims to investigate adolescents’ viewership of the third season of the Netflix drama 13 Reasons Why (13RW-3) and their engagement with show-related content, paying special attention to mental health outcomes and conversational partners. MethodsA panel-based research platform operated by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago recruited 157 adolescents aged 13 to 17 years from its nationally representative pool of participants. Participants answered questions about how they discussed and learned about social and mental health issues portrayed in 13RW-3 (eg, masculine role pressure and sexual assault) and questions about mental wellness (eg, mental health self-efficacy and depression). After the participants completed the survey (T1), they were directed to either watch 13RW-3 as it aired for the first time (intervention group) or not watch 13RW-3 (control group). Approximately one month later (T2), all the participants were asked to complete the postsurvey. Additional survey questions about conversational partners, information seeking because of watching the show, and use of show-related content were included in the intervention postsurvey. ResultsOur sample (N=157) was 52.2% (n=82) female and 54.8% (n=86) White, with a mean age of 14.99 (SD 1.4) years. At T2, viewers of 13RW-3 spoke about suicide significantly more frequently than nonviewers (P=.007). From T1 to T2, viewers increasingly discussed issues explored by 13RW-3 (P=.002), especially suicide, mental health, and bullying. Adolescent viewers were most likely to speak with friends, and parents were the second most commonly named. Two variables emerged as consistent moderators of conversational choices—having depressive symptoms and being impacted by sexual assault. There was no association between conversational frequency and information seeking around social and mental health issues, and neither mental health self-efficacy scores nor masculine role pressure scores significantly differed between viewers and nonviewers at T2. ConclusionsViewing 13RW-3, a globally watched television show featuring social and mental health issues, led to adolescent conversations and information searches about topics explored by the show. Depressive symptoms and the impact of sexual assault moderated several relationships, guiding participants toward engaging with certain issues and seeking out specific conversational partners. As 13RW-3’s stories drove conversations—and story-driven conversations can raise awareness, reduce stigma, shift attitudes, normalize certain behaviors, and strengthen supportive relationships—potential wellness implications for television shows featuring social and mental health issues are considerable

Violence Rating Prediction from Movie Scripts

Violent content in movies can influence viewers’ perception of the society. For example, frequent depictions of certain demographics as perpetrators or victims of abuse can shape stereotyped attitudes. In this work, we propose to characterize aspects of violent content in movies solely from the language used in the scripts. This makes our method applicable to a movie in the earlier stages of content creation even before it is produced. This is complementary to previous works which rely on audio or video post production. Our approach is based on a broad range of features designed to capture lexical, semantic, sentiment and abusive language characteristics. We use these features to learn a vector representation for (1) complete movie, and (2) for an act in the movie. The former representation is used to train a movie-level classification model, and the latter, to train deep-learning sequence classifiers that make use of context. We tested our models on a dataset of 732 Hollywood scripts annotated by experts for violent content. Our performance evaluation suggests that linguistic features are a good indicator for violent content. Furthermore, our ablation studies show that semantic and sentiment features are the most important predictors of violence in this data. To date, we are the first to show the language used in movie scripts is a strong indicator of violent content. This offers novel computational tools to assist in creating awareness of storytelling