David Buckingham 
After the Death of Childhood 

What will be the fate of childhood in the twenty-first century?
Will children increasingly be living ‘media childhoods’, dominated
by the electronic screen? Will their growing access to adult media
help to abolish the distinctions between childhood and adulthood?
Or will the advent of new media technologies widen the gaps between
the generations still further?

In this book, David Buckingham provides a lucid and accessible
overview of recent changes both in childhood and in the media
environment. He refutes simplistic moral panics about the negative
influence of the media, and the exaggerated optimism about the
‘electronic generation’. In the process, he points to the
challenges that are posed by the proliferation of new technologies,
the privatization of the media and of public space, and the
polarization between media-rich and media-poor. He argues that
children can no longer be excluded or protected from the adult
world of violence, commercialism and politics; and that new
strategies and policies are needed in order to protect their rights
as citizens and as consumers.

Based on extensive research, After the Death of Childhood
takes a fresh look at well-established concerns about the effects
of the media on children. It offers a challenging and refreshing
approach to the perennial concerns of researchers, parents,
educators, media producers and policy-makers.

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Acknowledgements vi

Introduction

1 In Search of the Child 3

Part I

2 The Death of Childhood 21

3 The Electronic Generation 41

Part II

4 Changing Childhoods 61

5 Changing Media 80

6 Changing Paradigms 103

Part III

7 Children Viewing Violence 123

8 Children as Consumers 145

9 Children as Citizens 168

Conclusion

10 Children’s Media Rights 191

Notes 208

References 223

Index 241

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David Buckingham is Reader in Education, Institute of Education, University of London.