ABSTRACT
Children’s use of interactive media has increased tremendously in the past few years. This chapter provides insight into the latest research on children, electronic games, and the Internet. Of the chapter’s three sections, the first concentrates on the interactive media environment of children. It reveals a number of distinctive characteristics of children’s entertainment Web sites and it reviews the various types of video and computer games that are currently available. The second section focuses on children’s access to interactive media. It examines which children use the various types of interactive media and how this differs among boys and girls from differing age groups and backgrounds. The final section reviews a number of positive and negative effects of interactive media. It discusses the most important physical (e.g., epileptic seizures, Nintendonitis), cognitive (e.g., intelligence, eye-hand coordination), and social effects (e.g., family communication, friendship formation, aggression) of interactive media.
