✨ Both the amount and the nature of children's YouTube use matter for social development.
🔗 Read more: doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2025.2493188
#mediapsychology #children #youtube #screenuse #socialskills
Higher viewing time was linked to poorer self-regulation. Both viewing time and negative interactions in favorite content were associated with higher anxiety. Viewing time was not directly related to social skills, but negative interactions were.
Min Jung Kim, Drew P. Cingel, and Yun Jung Choi studied how children's YouTube viewing time and exposure to negative interactions in favorite content relate to self-regulation, anxiety, and social skills among South Korean children aged 4–6.
📢 New publication alert! How does YouTube use affect young children's social skills?
🔗 Read more: doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2025.2498374
#mediapsychology #representation #mediaeffects #stereotypes #diversity #prejudice #metaanalysis
✨ The study underscores the robustness of media's influence on how we perceive racial, ethnic, and religious minorities.
Importantly, these effects remained consistent regardless of the target group, media type, genre, or study design.
Negative portrayals lead to unfavorable evaluations of minority groups, while positive portrayals produce the opposite effect. Both yield similar effect sizes, highlighting media's dual potential to shape intergroup attitudes.
🧐📄New Research Alert! How do media portrayals of racial and ethnic minorities shape our attitudes?
A meta-analysis by Muniba Saleem, Ian Hawkins, Stephen A. Rains, Dana Mastro, and Stewart Coles synthesized 60 studies on the effects of positive and negative media depictions on outgroup evaluations.
We're excited to share the second issue of Media Psychology, featuring new research on how video gaming shapes gender beliefs in STEM, how adolescents navigate sexuality and self-presentation online, how different journalism formats affect audience trust and wellbeing and more!
📷 Media Psychology, Volume 29, Issue 2 (2026) is now live!
🧵👇
• Do I Value My Private Data? Exploring Model-Driven Predictions on the Willingness to Use Smart Home Devices (Registered Report)
👉 Explore the full issue here:
www.tandfonline.com/toc/hmep20/c...
• “This Message was Deleted”: The Psychological Consequences of Being Out of the Loop During Messenger Use
• Conceptualizing and Measuring Character Depth
• Exposure to Interactive Media, but at Low Levels, is Associated with Better Executive Functioning in Children: A Meta-Analysis
This issue includes research on:
• Effects of Framing Counter-Stereotypes as Surprising on Rethinking Prior Opinions About Outgroups: The Moderating Role of Political Ideology
• A Content Analysis of Abortion Storylines on U.S. Streaming Services: Lessons from Narrative Persuasion
📢 Media Psychology, Volume 29, Issue 1 (2026) is now live!
We’re excited to kick off 2026 with the first issue of Media Psychology, featuring new research on media effects, persuasion, digital communication, child development, and technology use.
🔗 Read more: doi.org/10.1080/1521...
#mediapsychology #children #screenuse #executivefunction #development #problematicmedia #parenting #longitudinal
Results also suggest bidirectional relationships, where cognitive challenges and problematic media use reinforce each other over time.
✨ Overall, the study highlights how early media habits may have long-term developmental implications, emphasizing the importance of mindful media use in childhood.
Tracking over 1,100 children across multiple years, the findings show that higher media use at age 6 predicted more problematic media use later on, which in turn was linked to greater executive function difficulties.
👶📱 New Research Alert!
Does early childhood media use shape later cognitive development?
A longitudinal study by Meryem Şeyda Özcan, Yea-Ji Hong, and Koeun Choi examined how early media use predicts later problematic media use and executive function difficulties in children.
✨ In short, this concise tool makes it easier for scholars to quickly and accurately measure parasocial experiences.
🔗 Read more: doi.org/10.1080/1521...
#mediapsychology #parasocial #measurement #researchmethods #scales #mediaeffects
The newly developed Parasocial Processing Short Scale (PP-SS) includes just 9 items and was validated across multiple large samples. Results show strong reliability, validity, and consistency across different groups and media personas.
A new study by Tilo Hartmann, Philipp K. Masur, and Holger Schramm introduces a short, easy-to-use scale for assessing parasocial processing—the psychological processes behind our one-sided connections with media figures.
📊 New Research Alert!
Looking for a faster way to measure parasocial relationships in your research?
🔗 Read more: doi.org/10.1080/1521...
#mediapsychology #parasocial #measurement #researchmethods #scales #mediaeffects
Explore the full issue here:
👉 www.tandfonline.com/toc/hmep20/c...
Thank you to all of our authors, reviewers, and readers for making 2025 such a meaningful year for media psychology research!
• Mitigating Perceived Polarization by Acknowledging Subjectivity: An Experimental Study of the Impact of Differently Phrasing Comments in Online News Discussions
• “I Usually Love Your Posts, but I didn’t Like This One … ” the Role of Masspersonal Factors and Valence of Follower Communication on Influencer Responses, Mood, and Job Satisfaction
• Designing children’s media: taxonomies as a scaffold for learning and attention
• Protective Self-Presentation for Audiences with Interdependent Self-Construals on Ephemeral Platforms: The Case of Humblebragging
This issue includes research on:
• From Live Streamer to Influencer: Credibility Effects of Authority, Interactivity, and Sponsorship
• Exploring the Paradox of Cross-Cutting Exposure and Affective Polarization: A Curvilinear Model Influenced by Political Ideology Strength
🎉 Media Psychology, Volume 28, Issue 6 is now live!
We’re excited to share the final issue of Media Psychology for 2025, featuring six new research articles exploring influencer credibility, political polarization, online communication, self-presentation, and children’s media design.