child variables include age, cognitive ability, gender, social experience, and psychological needs.
Family variables include economics, afecting what media are purchased (videos, books, cDs, games, apps, mP3s); time, including what alternative leisure activities are pursued (games, sports, museums, trips); and mediation, or how much adult supervision accompanies media exposure.
Bidirectional variables include what the child brings to the media experience to change it (for example, computer knowledge can enable one to download software) and how the media experience changes the child (for example, surfing the Internet can provide vicarious experiences such as travel). “It is not what the media does to people but what people do with the media”