LOS ANGELES – As a parent, Yalda Uhls found herself immersed a decade ago in TV series including “Hannah Montana,” “iCarly” and “Victorious,” and uneasy about the message they sent to her 9-year-old daughter and other youngsters. “They were all about these people getting famous at a very young age,” Uhls said, suggesting that celebrity above all was the key to popularity and happiness.
Effort wasn't part of the equation, and families were scarcely in the picture. When Uhls made the shift from Hollywood studio executive to academic at the University of California, Los Angeles, she looked more closely at the issue.
Uhls devised a study of the values prominent in shows most popular with “tweens” — the catch-all name for youngsters age 8 to 12