Leonie Rutherford on the media, cultural literacy and healthy life habits.

There is a popular tendency to attribute a great deal, if not most, of the ills associated with young people and social change to the pernicious influence of the media. Many media scholars and cultural commentators deplore this tendency as a historically predictable series of moral panics, and they point to the complex web of factors contributing to children's cognitive, health and social outcomes. Conversely, contemporary children are often popularly, and romantically depicted as digital natives, pre-shaped by a technology-enhanced environment with an unprecedented ability to master emergent...