ABSTRACT
Christakis et al. ( 2013 ) Ever since the Payne Fund studies were conducted in the early years of the twentieth century to examine the eff ects of movies on children, our fi eld has predominantly focused on harmful media eff ects. Considerably less attention has been devoted to the positive eff ects of media use on child and adolescent well-being. To illustrate, meta-analyses on the eff ects of media violence could gather hundreds of studies (e.g. Bushman & Anderson, 2001 ; Paik & Comstock, 1994 ), while meta-analyses focusing on positive social and educational eff ects included only a few dozen (e.g. Mares & Woodard, 2005 ; Moses, 2008 ). This bias in research attention can be explained by several factors, including the public and political concerns about possibly harmful media content that have fueled research and the-often relatedpossibilities for research funding (cf. Lopez & Snyder, 2009 ).
