ABSTRACT
It may be a worthwhile endeavor to provide an overview of all – academic and non-academic – discourses in press, TV, or online about the role of the media in morally corrupting individuals and societies across the world. The decline of religious values, promiscuity, children’s lack of respect and failing academic scores – all have been blamed by one side or the other on the media and media use, be it books, comics, movies, television, video games, or the Internet (Eden, Grizzard, & Lewis, 2013). In this chapter, we move beyond the negative-effects paradigm and explore the relationship between media use and morality and the implications of this relationship for individuals’ well-being (Ryan & Deci, 2001; for a detailed discussion of the hedonic and eudaimonic dimensions of wellbeing, see the chapter by Huta in this volume).
