ABSTRACT
Think back to your childhood and your first encounter with a book, video, audiocassette tape, film, television show, or Internet source. How did you perceive the experience? Wally Lamb (1992) begins his book She’s Come Undone with Dolores’s first encounter with television:
Lamb’s description touches on several topics we will be exploring. How do child and teen perceptions of television or any mass medium differ from the perceptions of adults? Not only do youth perceptions differ from those of adults as did those of Dolores from her mother, but they are different at various developmental ages. The context for the relationship of children, teens, and the media is presented in the first three chapters. The theoretical context is in this chapter (chapter 1). The development of children’s perceptions of mass media is the topic of chapter 2, and the changes in media experiences by generations is the topic of chapter 3.
