The first research line investigates the immediate experience of media entertainment by its users. It focuses on identifying and explaining particular experiential states invoked by lean-back and lean-forward media entertainment, such as transportation, flow, and emotions. The research will use experimental designs and artificial stimuli in testing the effects of media product attributes. It will involve the development of verbal and non-verbal measurement techniques. This research line will greatly contribute to our understanding of entertainment appreciation, genre choice, and success and the relation between entertainment use and well-being and identity formation.

A second research line, entitled "the entertainization of childhood" addresses the impact of several characteristics of media entertainment (e.g., rapid pace, violence, action) on children's cognitive, affective, and behavioral development (i.e., cognitive ability, learning, ADHD, and antisocial behavior). An important aim of research line is to unravel the interplay between biological (e.g., genetic make-up, temperament), developmental, and social influences (i.e., parent, peer, and media influences) on children's development. The aim of this research line is to hypothesize on and investigate three different types of individual susceptibility to entertainment effects: biologicallybased, socially-based, and developmentally-based susceptibility. This research enables us to simultaneously discover: (a) how and why certain types of entertainment may influence certain children and adolescents, (b) which age groups are particularly susceptible to both positive and negative effects, and (c) how family and peer environments can maximize positive and minimize negative entertainment effects on children and adolescents.

A third research line focuses on the sexual entertainment environment of youth. In the past years, there have been heated public debates about whether audio-visual sexual content on the internet and on television, such as music videos, reality series, and pornographic material, affects adolescents' sexuality. Still, however, we lack a profound understanding of when and why such effects occur. Specifically, we do not know (a) which characteristics of audio-visual sexual content may cause such effects; (b) which processes underlie the effects; and (c) whether they depend on adolescents' developmental level and gender. The project addresses these shortcomings by developing a comprehensive account of how audio-visual sexual content influences adolescents' sexuality, especially their sexual cognitions and sexual risk behavior.