★ Front-line insights and cutting-edge findings from a team of leading scholars! This book is spearheaded by the core faculty of the Faculty of Publishing and Communication at the University of Melbourne, in collaboration with numerous scholars who have long studied children’s media culture, and was completed over several years. The author team has been deeply engaged in children’s reading, digital media, and the traditional publishing industry, and is an internationally recognized authority, offering readers state-of-the-art, reliable findings.

★ For the first time, based on extensive family surveys and diverse data collection, this work paints a realistic picture of children’s lives in the digital age! Focusing on the pressing issue of the rapid increase in children’s screen time, it directly addresses the real challenges faced by contemporary families and comprehensively examines the profound impact of digital media on young people’s lives and literacy skills—making it an indispensable “diagnostic report” for parents and educators today.

★ Subverting the traditional binary opposition between “screens versus books,” this book explores reading and storytelling in the true age of artificial intelligence! Through authoritative research, it reveals that when parents truly enter their children’s digital world, screens can become a bridge for communication and mutual understanding; in the family context, reading and digital media are, in fact, interwoven, coexisting, and mutually reinforcing.

This is a groundbreaking study exploring the impact of digital media on adolescents’ lives and literacy skills.
As the pandemic swept across the globe, children’s screen time surged—raising an urgent question: What does this mean for reading, learning, and family life? Drawing on a nationwide survey in Australia as well as interviews with families and librarians, this book reveals how digital devices are profoundly reshaping contemporary childhood.
Today, children are far more likely to own a tablet than a full‑length shelf of physical books. Yet the reality is far more complex than the familiar “screens versus books” debate. Lockdowns, remote learning, and other restrictions not only intensified children’s media use but also transformed many parents’ attitudes. For some parents, engaging more deeply in their children’s digital lives fostered understanding rather than fear. For others, particularly those with limited resources and support, the challenges proved especially daunting.
Grounded in rich empirical data and vivid portraits of diverse families, this study places children’s interactions with books and screens within their most meaningful context: the rhythms of everyday family life. It shows how reading and digital media now intertwine, how parental habits shape the family’s media culture, and what all this means for children’s future literacy and imagination.
Offering a fresh and indispensable perspective, this book examines how families navigate a rapidly evolving media landscape—and what that ultimately means for the next generation of readers.

Sybil Nolan
Dr. Sybil Nolan is an editor and historian, an Associate Professor in the Department of Publishing and Communication at the University of Melbourne, and also a co‑leader of the Child and Family Mediascape Research Group. Prior to her academic career, she worked in book publishing and journalism. She currently serves as the publisher of Grattan Street Press, the University of Melbourne’s affiliated teaching press.
With more than 25 years of experience in the media industry, she has been a newspaper reporter and a commissioning editor in the book publishing sector. Her research focuses on the impact of digital disruption on book publishing and children’s media use in the post‑pandemic era.

Shen Yuanshun
Shen Yuanshun is an Associate Professor of Media and Communications at the University of Melbourne, where she co‑leads the Child and Family Mediascape Research Group.
She is actively engaged in the academic community, having held various positions, such as Deputy Editor of the Journal of Advertising and membership on the editorial boards of Communication Research and Practice and the International Journal of Advertising.
Her award‑winning research has been widely published in leading communication journals, including New Media & Society, Communication Research, Human–Computer Interaction, the International Journal of Advertising, the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, and the Journal of Health Communication.

Kathryn Day
Dr. Kathryn Day is a Senior Lecturer in Publishing and Communication at the University of Melbourne. Before pursuing academia, she worked as an editor of both fiction and non‑fiction, accumulating over 15 years of in‑house and freelance experience at some of Australia’s most prominent publishing houses, including Penguin Random House, Allen & Unwin, Thames & Hudson, and Working Title Press.
Her articles have appeared in well‑known journals such as New Writing, TEXT Australia, and AI & Ethics. Her latest monograph, Digital Picture Books for Young Children: Readers and Publishers (Routledge, 2024), examines how publishers develop digital reading materials for young children.

Pei Xin
Dr. Pei Xin is a lecturer in the Department of Media and Communications at the University of Melbourne. Before joining the university, she studied and worked at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the University of Nottingham Ningbo, and the Aging Society and Education Research Institute (ARISE) in Singapore. Her research focuses on the social impacts of adopting information and communication technologies (ICT) in marginalized contexts. Using an interdisciplinary approach, she investigates how the adoption and use of ICT can either empower or disempower individuals across dimensions such as gender, aging, and racial discrimination.
Her research has been published in top‑tier journals, including New Media & Society, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Information, Communication & Society, and Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies.
Her current research projects center on intergenerational technology transfer from adult children to elderly parents, exploring the concerns and challenges faced by adult children when integrating digital technologies into elder care—such as understanding older adults’ perceptions of and acceptance of medical artificial intelligence; developing a co‑design approach that involves people with epilepsy in the creation of AI‑assisted tools for seizure detection and diagnosis; and identifying the issues and risks associated with children’s use of AI for reading and storytelling.

1 The Story of Picture Books
2 Can Books and Screens Coexist Harmoniously, Living Happily Ever After?
3 The Conflict Between Children, Parents, and Screens
4 After the Flood: The Post-Pandemic Lives of Children and Adolescents
5 Reading and Narrative in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
6 Responding to the Changing Landscape of Digital Family Life

Acknowledgments
About This Study
Notes
Index