Content Effects: Educational Media for Children

In this entry educational media are defined as media content that has been designed with research‐based knowledge of how the target audience uses and understands media and that systemically incorporates academic or social curricula into its core. This entry highlights key findings for educational media effects in childhood, in particular illustrating how educational media can support a range of cognitive (e.g., literacy, mathematics) and behavioral (e.g., prosocial) outcomes. Additionally, the entry presents two main theories—SCT and the capacity model—that are most frequently offered to explain these effects. It concludes with a discussion on future directions, both practical and empirical, for the field of educational media.