A new study is showing that allowing children to watch too much media about traumatic events could be harming them, nodding at how important it is for parents to really monitor what their children are watching. Screens and the media have become a large part of everyone’s lives, and while it is important to stay informed of what is going on in the world, we cannot ignore the negatives this can have on everyone’s mental health and wellbeing. This may be especially true for children, and allowing them to watch the news for too long can be harmful to them.
According to Medical Xpress, a new study was done that showed that excessive media exposure to traumatic events can harm children. This could be anything from the pandemic, to a mass shooting or wartime footage. This study was done by Florida International University and it can be read in full here.
To complete the study, researchers were using media examples of hurricanes and other natural disasters and the impact they had on a child’s brain. They had previously found that exposure to too many traumatic events in media was leading children to develop post-traumatic stress symptoms regardless of whether they even lived near where the event was happening.
These findings were confirmed with this study and they saw differences in the brain when it came to how children were responded to these events. Anthony Dick was one of the researchers and he stated that exposure to traumatic events can be even worse for children because their brains are still developing. They are also still developing their sense of security and since they have little personal control over their own environment, it can trigger PTSD symptoms. PTSD can have long-term impacts on a child as they grow into adulthood.
Researchers stated that their findings will help them educate and inform communities and families on how they can prepare for disasters while keeping the mental health risks low. Previous studies were done using mad-man disasters, but this was the first one to look at natural disasters and how media coverage can impact children. It is also a nod to parents that if there is a traumatic event, that they may want to make sure their children are not as exposed to the coverage and parents should check the status after their children have gone to bed. This is not to say that children shouldn’t be taught about these things, but the parents can control it better by taking in the information and then relaying it to their children in a way that is developmentally appropriate.
Sources: Medical Xpress, Nature