Category Archives: Commentary

Billions of people around the world play video games, making gaming one of the most popular forms of entertainment today. Yet while we know there are many positive aspects to video games for learning and play, many still worry that they could also be bad for us. Video games have been accused of making players violent, isolated, dumb, or addicted. But what does academic research actually say? This is what I discuss in my most recent book, The Psychology of…

Like many of you, we’ve been thinking a lot about the future. What do we want to take with us from the time before the coronavirus? What’s best left in the past? How do we want to live as we stagger, sore-armed, back into society? If we’ve learned anything from the past year, it’s that collaboration carried us through. Working together is what kept kids learning when the pandemic sent them home. It’s what developed vaccines faster than ever before.…

In March 2020, schools, libraries, and businesses all over the country closed their physical buildings as we began the long effort to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. But community leaders rallied to bring their services to children and families at home, adapting to new circumstances with new technologies. Claudia Haines shares how the Homer Public Library  transitioned from in-person to remote programs to keep families engaged throughout the pandemic.    Just about a year ago, my library closed the building because…

Growing up, it seemed completely natural that my mother worked as a computer programmer. Terms like COBOL and C were commonplace in our house, and in the evenings while I did homework, she would pore over printed-out lines of code to find bugs. We’d often go into her office on weekends so she could figure out a problem in the server room (always bundled up in heavy sweaters because it was absolutely freezing in there to keep the mainframe cooled…

In 1968, a year before Sesame Street went on the air,  the fledgling Children’s Television Workshop (CTW) staff—including Joan Ganz Cooney, Robert Davidson, David Connell, Dr. Edward Palmer, Barbara Frengal, Samuel Gibbon, Anne Bower, James McConnell, and John Stone—conducted a seminar covering five key topic areas that Joan Ganz Cooney had identified in her extensive report to the Carnegie Corporation in 1966, The Potential Uses of Television in Preschool Television. The seminars brought together leading experts in the fields of…

The following post is part of a series springing from the Cooney Center’s joint initiative with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, By/With/For Youth: Inspiring Next Gen Public Media Audiences. This is a project aimed at exploring the role of public media in the lives of young people by taking stock of the current landscape and imagining a future that public media can build alongside teens and tweens. With that in mind, we are inviting public media practitioners who are already experimenting…

With children growing up in ever-changing conditions in the digital age, digital parenting becomes more crucial than ever before. The predominant focus for parents, policy-makers, and researchers has long been on minimizing the risk of harm. Yet the swift transition to children’s online learning during lockdown caught many off guard. Children from disadvantaged families struggle to get online due to a lack of device or internet connectivity. Safety issues such as online child pornography are also in the spotlight. In…

I remember looking under the television set for the legs of the colorful, English-speaking monsters from Sesame Street. Back then, our TV set had four legs on a wooden box and stood in the middle of the tatami living room at my home by the Sea of Japan. I dreamed about going to America one day to meet those furry monsters and seeing their whole bodies. Sesame Street began broadcasting in Japan in 1971. Many in my generation learned English…

Launching on World Children’s Day 2020, the Digital Futures Commission invites innovators, policymakers, researchers, and civil society to unlock digital innovation in the interests of children and young people. The work will be informed throughout by insights from children and young people themselves, and is geared toward real-world change for children, guided by the Commissioners and supported by 5Rights Foundation. The work has begun by listening to what children and young people value about the digital world and the changes…

Unlike kids in the 70s, tweens and teens today are posting, dancing, and streaming across platforms from TikTok to Twitch. They have no interest in being corralled to discrete brands or destinations. They enjoy a banquet of high-quality digital offerings that are ready when and where they are. And they’re always one step ahead of us. While just about everything has changed in terms of media consumption, something essential has not: kids’ curiosity and desire for agency. The Corporation for…