"Combining a comprehensive literature review with original empirical research on young people's use of new media, this book provides a fresh and in-depth discussion of the increasingly complex relationship between the media and childhood, the family and the home." "We can no longer imagine our daily lives without media and communication technologies. At the start of the 21st century, the home is being transformed into the site of a multimedia culture. This book looks at the discussions around the potential benefits of this new media and asks: What impact are the new media having on childhood and adolescence? Are these technologies changing the nature of young people's leisure and sociability? And has the participation of children in private and public life changed?"--Jacket. This volume presents an account of children and young people's changing media environment at the end of the twentieth century. With the current proliferation of personal media in the home and particularly in children's bedrooms, analogies between early television and today's new screen-based media are taken as a basis for applying to the personal computer lessons learned from television. A parallel can be drawn in terms of usage and effects on domestic time and space, on social and family relations and on lifestyles, for young people are generally at the cutting edge of these developments.