Handbook of Children and Screens: Digital Media, Development, and Well-Being from Birth Through Adolescence

This open access handbook synthesizes the current research about the impacts of digital media on children across development. Drawing on the expertise of scientists and researchers as well as clinicians and practitioners, the book summarizes research through interdisciplinary expert reviews. First, it addresses the cognitive, physical, mental, and psychosocial impacts on infants, children, and adolescents. Next, the book explores how media influences relationships, family, culture, and society. Finally, it examines the impacts of specific digital domains pertinent to youth, including education technology, video gaming, and emerging technologies. Chapters employ a parallel structure, including background on the topic, summary of the current state of the research, future research directions, and recommendations for relevant stakeholders. The volume examines the timely issue of optimal child development in an increasingly digital age, offering innovative approaches to establish a solid and robust scientific foundation for this field of study as well as evidence-based action for adults who support positive youth development.

Key areas of coverage include:

• Cognition and brain development.

• Physical and mental health.

• Problematic uses of the internet.

• Race.

• Gender and sexuality.

• Parenting in the digital age.

• Cyberbullying and digital cruelty.

• Media policy.

The Handbook of Children and Screens is a must-have resource for researchers, professors, and graduate students as well as clinicians, therapists, educators, and related professionals in clinical child, school, and developmental psychology, social work, public health, epidemiology, neuroscience, human development and family studies, social psychology, sociology, and communication.

This is an open access book.

Dimitri A. Christakis, MD, MPH., is the George Adkins Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Washington, the Chief Health Officer at Special Olympics International, Editor in Chief of JAMA Pediatrics, and Chief Science Officer at Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child Development. He has devoted his career to investigating how early experiences impact children and to helping parents improve their children’s early learning environments. He and his colleagues in the Christakis Lab have made a number of landmark findings, including discovering that young children who watch TV are more likely to develop attention problems and other health and behavioral issues. He is the author of more than 250 original research articles, a textbook on pediatrics, and co-author of the book, The Elephant in the Living Room: Make Television Work for Your Kids. He has appeared on CNN, NPR, Today, CBS News, ABC News, and NBC News and was recently featured as a TEDx speaker. 

Dr. Christakis began serving as an expert witness in social media litigation in September 2023. 

Lauren Hale, Ph.D., Professor of Family, Population, and Preventive Medicine; Core Faculty, Program in Public Health; Renaissance School of Medicine, Stony Brook University, studies the social patterning of sleep health and how it contributes to inequalities in health and well-being with current or previous funding from NICHD, NIDDK, NHLBI, and NIA in addition to private funding. Dr. Hale has more than 160 publications in peer-reviewed journal articles. She serves on the Board of Directors (recently as Chair) of the National Sleep Foundation and is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal Sleep Health as well as the Scientific Advisory Panel of the Pajama Program and Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child Development.