This chapter examines U.S. children's and adolescents' exposure to television, videos, and movies. We label these “noninteractive screen media” because, unlike interactive media, the experience of their content is largely unaffected by viewer response. This is not to say that viewers of television and movies are not cognitively active. Differences in meaning depend on individuals' information-processing activities, and by no means is TV viewing a passive activity (Anderson&Lorch, 1983; Bickman, Wright & Huston, 2001). However, what appears on the television or motion picture screen at any given moment does not depend on what a viewer does. Interactive screen media such as computers and video games, on the other hand, do depend on audience response; where a user clicks or how a game player responds has a direct, immediate effect on which content comes next.

We include television, videos, and movies in the same chapter because there is little reason to differentiate among them. Although on some dimensions the experience of attending a movie in a theater is quite different from watching television in one's own home, at bottom there are more similarities than differences. Audiovisual narratives lie at the core of each medium, and the structure of those narratives is largely the same, with most of the same factors mediating viewer responses to each. For example, it matters little whether a behavior and associated consequences are portrayed on television, a videotape, or in a movie; to the extent that the behavior and associated consequences are clear and salient, the likelihood that viewers will learn is the same across media. In addition, the line between movies and television is further blurred because most movies eventually appear and are watched on television, or at least on a television screen. The experience of watching commercially produced videos is difficult to differentiate from watching television, and when videotape is used to record a television show, the experience is almost identical. For all these reasons, we have grouped “noninteractive” screen media.