Green Time and Screen Time: Mapping the Relationship Between Children, Media, and Nature

Abstract

This chapter interrogates the cultural narratives that surround the children/media/nature relationship. While the chapters ahead undertake analyses of specific children’s media texts in order to examine their representations of the more-than-human world, this chapter considers how the relationship between children, media, and nature has itself been represented in public discourse, and how it has become an object of both anxiety and fascination for adults. I examine the various ways in which media is perceived to be an impediment to a healthy child/nature relationship, with attention paid to the ‘nature deficit disorder’, misinformation, and the commercialisation of childhood. Moving beyond these ‘media effects-style’ readings of the child/media/nature nexus, I propose that there is a crucial intersection between media literacies and environmental literacies: for media literacy is needed in order to fruitfully examine the meanings about the environment at work in children’s texts, while media and environmental literacies contain a shared set of skills relating to participation, collaboration, problem-solving, and communication.