The Children’s Digital Media Center (CDMC) is a multi-university consortium uniting a national community of scholars, researchers, educators, policy-makers, and industry professionals in a community whose goal is to improve the digital media environment in which children live and learn. Funded by the National Science Foundation, The CDMC is working to gain a greater understanding of how interactive digital media experiences affect children’s long-term social adjustment, academic achievement, and personal identity. Specific objectives include:
- Monitoring and synthesizing emerging research trends in the area of children and interactive digital media
- Carrying out a program of collaborative research on interactive digital media and its effects on children
- Encouraging broader understanding of digital media through comparative communication analysis, particularly comparisons with other electronic media
- Promoting more effective application of research by developing collaborative projects with industry and policy communities
- Disseminating knowledge about children and digital media through conventional and online publication, workshops, and conference presentations
The CDMC is headquartered at Georgetown University, with affiliated faculty and labs at the University of California Riverside, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Cornell University, and Northwestern University. The center has been funded in large part by one six-year grant, two five-year grants and one three-year grant from the National Science Foundation, totaling $9.95 million. Additional funding comes from the Stuart Family Foundation, the Henry J Kaiser Family Foundation, the Markle Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and Georgetown University.