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Children, Adolescents and Media Use: Recent Trends and Progress

A Special Issue of the Psychological Topics

Dear colleagues,

This special issue of Psychological Topics aims to highlight theoretical and empirical advances related to digital technology use, especially media use among children and adolescents.The use of digital technology is rapidly increasing among children and adolescents and has become an integral part of their culture, education, and social life. Children and adolescents use digital technology, different digital devices and applications, to entertain themselves, fulfil their school obligations, gather information, and communicate and relate with each other. Digital media such as the internet, digital television, virtual reality, and computer games constitutes an important part of children’s and adolescents’ developmental contexts. In particular, social media, a group of internet-based applications that enables the creation and sharing of user-shaped content, such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. The rapid development and advancement of digital technology have made digital devices readily available to children and adolescents, and they are beginning to use them at a very early age. In such a widespread developmental context, digital technology use may have a profound impact on different domains of children’s and adolescents’ well-being, health, and development. With the development of new research methodologies and theoretical frameworks, we are beginning to understand more and more about how digital technology use affects child and adolescent development. The purpose of this special issue is to bring together current knowledge about how digital technology use, especially media use, shapes the lives of children and adolescents, and to offer perspectives on the future direction of much-needed work. The goals of this special issue are (a) to bring together research and theory on digital technology use in children and adolescents to promote a deeper and more systematic understanding of the short-term and long-term as well as positive and negative effects of digital technology use on various developmental domains and outcomes; (b) to bring together articles from diverse disciplines in psychology, including but not limited to clinical, developmental, health, social/personality, and related interdisciplinary fields; and (c) to promote possible future directions in this area of research. The special issue of our journal, Psychological Topics, Children, Adolescents and Media Use: Recent Trends and Progress, will be published in April 2024. This thematic issue is intended to present a wide range of original research reports, theoretical articles, and reviews on the topic. We are interested in manuscripts that present new theoretical and conceptual frameworks or empirical papers that make significant contributions to theoretical and conceptual thinking about digital technology use in children and adolescents. We strongly encourage the practical implications of the findings in manuscripts.

The broad themes of the special issue include, among others:
- Age trends in digital technology use
- Role of disposition, development, and social factors in children’s and adolescents’ digital technology use
- Effects of digital technology use on physical, cognitive, emotional, and social development
- Differential susceptibility of children and adolescents to digital technology use
- Peer and romantic relationships and digital technology use
- Education and digital technology use
- Digital toys and children’s and adolescents’ development
- Problematic digital technology use and children’s and adolescents’ well-being and development
- Ethical and legal aspects of digital technology use in children and adolescents
- Promotion and support of healthy habits of digital technology use among children and adolescents
Our peer-reviewed scientific journal is published three times a year by the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Rijeka, Croatia. Psychological Topics is indexed in Scopus, PsycINFO, DOAJ, Academic Search Complete (EBSCO), ProQuest and ERIH PLUS and has internationally recognized scholars as editorial board members. Seventeen thematic issues have been published to date, covering a variety of topics with contributions from several of the world's leading experts.

Submission details
Authors wishing to contribute a manuscript to this special issue are invited to submit a letter of intent by February 1, 2023.
Letters of intent should include (1) tentative title; (2) a brief description of the proposed contribution (original paper, theoretical paper, or review paper), maximum 400 words; and (3) author affiliations and contact information for the corresponding author. Letters should be emailed to one of the editors with the subject “PT: Special Issue” or in response to this email.
The deadline for submission of complete articles is September 15, 2023.

Manuscript Preparation and Submission
To submit a manuscript, please follow the manuscript submission guidelines listed under “Authors guidelines” on the journal’s website.
For more information, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Sincerely,
Tamara Martinac Dorčić¹ and Marina Merkaš² (The editors of the special issue)
¹Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Psychology, Rijeka, Croatia; tamaramd@ffri.uniri.hr
²Catholic University of Croatia, Department of Psychology, Zagreb, Croatia; marina.merkas@unicath.hr