Media and civic socialization of youth

Research on the development of citizenship has been reinvigorated by considering adolescents as participants actively engaged in, and interacting with, family, peers, teachers, and the media. This contrasts with earlier top-down transmission models that saw adolescents as passive recipients of information from parents and teachers. Active citizenship is now seen as a largely indirect result of contextualized knowledge and cognitive skills learned from news media use, interpersonal communication, and active participation in school and community volunteer activities. The processes of active citizenship learning are an important part of the moral development of adolescents and young adults. (C) Society for Adolescent Medicine, 2000.