Imagination and Play in the Electronic Age [Paperback]

Television, video games, and computers are easily accessible to twenty-first-century children, but what impact do they have on creativity and imagination? In this book, two wise and long-admired observers of children's make-believe look at the cognitive and moral potential--and concern--created by electronic media.

As Dorothy and Jerome Singer show, violent images in games and TV are as toxic as many observers have feared by stimulating destructive ideas and troubling aggression. But should all electronic media be banned from children's lives? Calmly and authoritatively, the Singers argue that in fact some screen time can enrich children's creativity and play, and can even promote school readiness. With guidance from parents and teachers, empathy, creativity, and imagination can expand and intensify in the electronic age.

Imagination and Play in the Electronic Age is a fascinating description of the way that TV, video games, and computers shape both our real life actions and our imaginative worlds. The Singers combine impressive scholarship with deep insight about the dangers and potential benefits of the increasing role of electronic media in the lives of children and adults--and in the end, offer an optimistic view of our wired future.Brings to light some potentially important issues for how various forms of media may facilitate or hinder the likelihood of young children engaging in symbolic and imaginative play...The book should be required reading for persons with an interest in the question of how the shifts in childhood leisure time activities may be affecting culture as a whole.Concise and readable, this book offers a compelling examination of the ways in which video games, television, and the Internet (both e-mail and the Web) help to shape the lives of contemporary children, adolescents, and adults. Singer and Singer focus on the younger set, and they begin with a discussion of the mind's capacity for growth and self-knowledge. They move througlãx