News, Children's Responses to

As the main source of information on current events, television news presents many complicated challenges to adults and children alike. Through the news, children are presented a variety of complex issues, in both verbal and graphic forms, about the familiar and the foreign, the domestic and the international. More specifically, natural catastrophes, war, rioting, terrorist attacks, and so forth are crisis periods when children around the world may experience a heightened sense of chaos, lack of control over their lives, and a great need for information about their world as well as assistance in making sense of what is happening and assurance that the future will be better. Some researchers have also raised a concern that accumulated exposure to violent news may contribute to the Mean World Syndrome, in which children cultivate a negative perspective on the world as a mean and dangerous place.

What challenges does the news pose for children's understanding of their world and for their emotional well-being? Children hear about, see, and must cope with many troubling, often frightening events that were once known only to adults. In attempting to understand these events, children have to assimilate the fragments of information they receive from the media and try to make sense of them. They have to deal emotionally with the suffering of others and with gruesome portrayals of atrocities. Such stimuli pose demanding cognitive challenges even for adult viewers of the news, and they are particularly challenging for younger people. Furthermore, children's skill, interest, and experience in making sense of news reports varies with their age, developmental level, media competence, and personal life experience.

Research on the development of children's understanding of news has argued that their interest in and consumption of news is limited. Children, so it seems, rarely mention news programs as something they watch regularly, and overall, they rate news very low on their list of favorite topics. Yet, other studies have documented the fact that even young children are exposed to news quite often, as either incidental viewers or as part of a family gathering, and that this behavior may be growing as the nature of news has changed to a more available, dynamic, visual, and intensive type of coverage, particularly at times of social crisis. Interest in news has been related to increasing age, gender (more boys than girls following the traditional association of masculinity with the public sphere), and class (more interest among the educated and middle class).

Questions about the place news might have in children's lives have been developed through three complementary lines of inquiry.