21st century media, fame, and other future aspirations: A national survey of 9-15 year olds
Vol.8,No.4(2014)
technology; social media; values; preteens; fame; self
Yalda T. Uhls
Yalda T. Uhls, MBA, Ph.D is a senior researcher at the Children’s Digital Media Center@LA, UCLA campus, as well as the Regional Director of Common Sense Media, a national non-profit that helps children, families and educators navigate the digital world. Yalda’s research focuses on how older and newer media impacts the social behavior of preadolescents. In addition to her peer-reviewed published research, Yalda has co-authored a chapter on the Internet for the Encyclopedia of Adolescence and writes for non-academic audiences in outlets such as HuffPost, UCLA’s PsychologyinAction and her own blog, IntheDigitalAge. Awards include UCLA’s Psychology in Action Award, for excellence in communicating psychological research to audiences beyond academia as well as the Dena Chertoff Graduate Service Award, UCLA and the Millard Madsen Distinguished Dissertation Award, UCLA. Prior to her academic career, Yalda spent over fifteen years as a senior entertainment executive and producer. Notable positions include Senior VP at MGM as well as consultant to Google LA, Disney Channel and Henson Pictures.
Eleni Zgourou
Eleni Zgourou, M.A., is a Ph.D student in Education at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC). She studies how culture and parenting practices influence child development and academic achievement during early childhood. Before she moved to North Carolina she was a research assistant at the Children’s Digital Media Center @ Los Angeles at UCLA, where she worked on projects examining the influence of digital media use on youth development and values.
Patricia M. Greenfield
Patricia Greenfield, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Psychology at UCLA and Director of the Children’s Digital Media Center @ Los Angeles, is author of Mind and Media: The Effects of Television, Video Games, and Computers (1984), subsequently translated into nine languages and released as a classic edition in 2014; coeditor of Effects of Interactive Entertainment Technologies on Development (1994); coeditor of Children, Adolescents, and the Internet: A New Field of Inquiry in Developmental Psychology (2006); coeditor of Social Networking on the Internet: Developmental Implications (2008); and co-editor of Interactive Technologies and Human Development (2012). Her empirical research on the developmental implications of interactive media has included action video games, massive multiplayer online role-playing games, teen chat rooms, social networking sites, and YouTube. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she has received the Bronfenbrenner Award for Lifetime Contribution to Developmental Psychology in the Service of Science and Society from the American Psychological Association (2010) and the Distinguished Contribution to Cultural and Contextual Factors in Child Development award from the Society for Research in Child Development (2013).
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