Are You Frightened? Children’s Cognitive and Affective Reactions to News Coverage of School Shootings

ABSTRACT

As news involving violence can frighten children, people worry that news portrayals of gun violence are often appalling. Based on cultivation theory and the theory of cognitive development, this study examined parents’ perceptions of the children’s exposure and reactions to news coverage of school shootings. A survey of U.S. parents (N = 266) demonstrated that children’s exposure to news coverage of school shootings is positively related to children’s frightened responses, according to the parents’ perspective. Parents reported that children more exposed to the news are more likely to perceive the world as dangerous. Children’s frightened reactions were a mediator that explains the relationship. Parents also answered that depending on children’s cognitive developmental stages, children showed different coping strategies to frightening news. Parental mediation did not have a significant relationship with children’s frightened responses. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Given that the United Nations has defined a child as every human below 18 years (OHCHR, n.d.), parents with children from 2 to 17 years old were targeted. Parents with children younger than 2 were excluded because it is unlikely for children of that age to watch/understand news stories.

² From original measurement, this study excluded: “allowed the child to read a specific newspaper or use a specific app, television channel, or website which the child picked” because of its low factor loadings.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gyo Hyun Koo

Gyo Hyun Koo (M.A., Indiana University Bloomington, 2019) is a doctoral student in the School of Journalism at The University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests include people’s selection and perception of the news and political information and how the media environment affects people’s political beliefs and attitudes.