Introduction: Childhood and Nostalgia

Abstract

The introduction describes the basic argument for the book: in the past 100 years, adults and parents have become anxious and even panicked about each new form of media that appeals to young people (radio, movies, comic books, video games, the Internet and smartphones). Fears about the effects of media on youth are remarkably constant and use the same tropes, revealing a strong nostalgia on the part of adults for an imaginary, idealized, media-free youth and a similarly inaccurate, hostile, exaggerated perception of the influence of the new media. At any given moment in the last century, one can point to the media that was central to a crisis affecting young people, who were presented as victims of this pervasive and insidious influence.