Children learn about the world through a variety of sources, including parents, teachers, friends, and the media. Although news gleaned from television, radio, or the Internet can be a positive educational experience for kids, problems can arise when the images presented are violent or news stories touch on disturbing topics. Reports on subjects such as child abductions, homicides, terrorist activities, school violence, or a politician's sex life can teach kids to view the world as a confusing, threatening, or unfriendly place.

How can you deal with these disturbing stories and images? Talking to your children about what they watch or hear will help them put frightening information into a more balanced and reasonable context.

How Kids Perceive the News
Unlike movies or entertainment programs, news is real. But depending on your child's age or maturity level, he may not yet understand the distinctions between fact and fantasy. "Preschoolers are equally terrified by the idea of Pinocchio turning into a donkey as they are by a story on a school shooting," says Joanne Cantor, PhD, author of MOMMY, I'M SCARED - HOW TV AND MOVIES FRIGHTEN CHILDREN AND WHAT WE CAN DO TO PROTECT THEM (Harcourt Brace & Company, 1998).

By the time a child reaches 7 or 8, however, what he watches on television can seem all too real. For some youngsters, the vividness of a sensational news story can be internalized and transformed into something that might happen to them. A child watching a news story about a kidnapping or bombing might worry "Could I be next? Could that happen to me?"

Natural disasters or stories of other types of devastation can be personalized in the same manner. A child in Massachusetts who sees a house tumbling off a cliff during a California earthquake may spend a sleepless night worrying about the stability of the ground beneath his own apartment building. A child in Ohio, seeing news about a tragedy in New York, might fear for his own family.

"The pictures bring it home - whether it's a real possibility or not," Dr. Cantor says. TV has an effect of shrinking the world and bringing it into your own living room.

Television news can also promote a "mean-world" syndrome, according to John Murray, PhD, a child psychologist who has done research on the effects of violence on children. "News programs often concentrate on blood and gore, which can give children a misrepresentation of what society - and the world they inhabit - is really like."