INTRODUCTION:

Children are the backbone and future of Nation. So, upbringing of children with proper care is essential. People always want their child to be healthy, educated, well-mannered. But sometimes they are exposed to certain situation (like watching horror movies in front of a child) unknowingly which may impact their mental health. In this competitive world for updating ourselves, we watch news from different sources. For getting TRP or BARC rating point media channels are broadcasting sensitive news. So, it may impact in child’s mental health negatively. For knowing the issue, it is important to study their mental condition after watching the sensitive news.

In future, this kind of study may lead to a solution or suggestion to the media channels how to broadcast the news where children’s mental health will be secured. Many kids of primary school age felt undesirable reactions after viewing television news. Viewing the broadcast with parents or under the control of a teacher might aid the children to handle with negative emotions, for example, as adults can offer clarifications or can comfort the children. Though, since today’s children more often view the news alone in online, it is vital to give them their individual apparatuses to handle feelings provoked, chiefly by negative news content. So far, barely any study has been directed concerning coping strategies that children can practice in this respect. One study presented that real-life chats with peers about news assisted children to manage with their emotions after viewing negative news, but the potentials that the digital landscape offers in this respect are unknown. (Ebbinkhuijsen, Bevelander, Buijzen, and Kleemans, 2021)

Children and the News:

The increase of children’s news has led to amplified academic consideration to the topic over the past years. A significant mark of research has been examining the effects that contact to the news may have on children. In most cases, these studies have engrossed on negative effects by presentation that children show greater negative emotions. Succeeding this line of assumption, care is upstretched to the question how children’s news can be improved tailored to children’s emotive needs (Ebbinkhuijsen, Bevelander, Buijzen, and Kleemans, 2021). Another studies converses news for children from the viewpoint that children have community rights in democratic societies and thus essential to be sufficiently informed. In these studies, it is questioned whether it is essential and wanted to bowdlerize news for children. (Staksrud, 2013).

Coping Schemes:

Coping is characteristically mentioned to as the cognitive and behavioural energies to deal with, decrease or bear values of traumatic circumstances. Contact to negative news content can be seen as an instance of such a demanding state. Two kinds of coping are discriminated in this respect. First, proactive coping mentions to efforts that are assumed in advance of a possibly worrying occasion to stop or adjust it beforehand. With respect to newscast, an imperative proactive coping strategy includes news literacy education—that is, allowing people to access, assess, analyse and generate news. For example, children with higher news literacy planes should be able to discover news content that is more appropriate for them. Second, reactive coping mentions to efforts to contract with a worrying occasion that is happening at that moment or has previously happened.

When it derives to dealing with emotions provoked by negative news (e.g., news about violence, conflict, catastrophes, accidents), problem-focused coping is not compulsory to be unproductive because children cannot apply effect on the source of their experienced emotions. This study objects to put children into direct action. To allow children to deal with their emotions in a straight way, social support seeking might be an active instrument. So, this study examined whether social support seeking can be used as a coping strategy to deal with negative news events.

METHODOLOGY:

Sample:

At first 53 children were participated in the study and out of which 94.9% reported that they are watching news daily. So, only those children who are regularly watching news were selected for the study. 50 children age range between 8-14yrs from different region of Guwahati city were participated for the study.

Geographical area:

Children from different region of Guwahati city were participated in the study.

Sampling Method:

Purposive Sampling method was used for the research.

Research Design:

A Survey research method was introduced.

Tools: A self-developed socio-demographic data sheet and a self-developed survey research questionnaire were developed. At first 25 questions were developed by researchers and out of these 10 survey questions were highly rated by the 20 experts from Psychology background.

RESULT:

a. Do you watch news?

Figure No 1

b. Have you seen anything unpleasant/sensitive news?

Figure No 2

100% of the participants have reported that they are regularly watching sensitive news (Fig No 2)

c. Did you remember when u see anything unpleasant

Figure No 3

43.6% reported that within this week they have seen sensitive/ unpleasant news (Fig No 3)

d. Can you remember the content?

Figure No 4

28.2% have reported that recently they have seen the news of murder which have disturbed them most but the news of accident, rape and other type of sensitive content also they have reported which they can remember (Fig No 4)

e. How did it impacts on you?

Figure No 5

35.9% have reported that the new made them sad, and 25.6% reported that they got scared after watching this news. But, children also feelt awkward, unwell, experienced mood swing and sleep disturbances too. (Fig No 5)

f. Did you shared the news to anyone?

Figure No 6

82.1% children have reported that they shared the news to someone (Fig No 6)

g. With whom you shared about the news?

Figure No 7

51.3% children reported that they are reporting the event to their friends, 33.3% children reported to their parents (Fig No 7)

h. Did the news cause you any distress?

Figure No 8

53.8% reported that they were experience distress afterwards. (Fig No 8)

i. Do you still think about the news?

Figure No 9

53.8% reported that they are still thinking about the news. (Fig No 9)

j. How often do you think about the particular news?

Figure No 10

56.4% reported that the when they observe same type of news then that thought of the particular news came, 28.2% reported that they are having same thought when they are alone. (Fig No 10)

k. According to you how media will telecast the sensitive news?

Figure No 11

33.3% children reported that placing counselling helpline when the news is telecasting may help them to overcome, 23.1% reported that filtering the news and 15.4% reported that calling psychologist to desensitize the event may reduce the issue. (Fig No 11)

l. Do you need any kind of Psychological assistance after watching sensitive news?

Figure No 12

51.3% reported that they don’t need psychological assistance after watching sensitive news. (Fig No 12)

DISCUSSION:

(Lemish, 1998) proposes, if children are citizens (“being”) rather than citizens in the making (“becoming”) then they “need access to the mediated public domain of television news – both as an audience whose needs and interests are taken into consideration as well as participants whose opinions and concerns are being voiced”. Each position rests on firm origins of the child which create diverse attitudes on children’s citizenship and their association to the news. Childhood is clear by a sequence of psychological and physical growths (Piaget, 1969). It is supposed to be a phase of virtue and susceptibility progressively leading to adulthood; deficiency of worldly knowledge makes children vulnerable to dishonesty (by “bad” adults) so it develops the accountability of adults (“good” ones) to guard them. Children are not usually believed to be citizens since they have no right to casting vote or to be held accountable for their activities in the same way as adults. Fierce news, in specific, may cause children emotional damage. Certain evidences and descriptions are thought to be unsuitable for specific age groups (van der Molen and Konijn, 2007). Scholars have inspected how disturbing news content might lead children to experience negative emotional consequences (van der Molen J. W., 2004). Researches have made a number of significant visions into children’s replies to news and elevated consciousness about the likely short- and long-term emotional damage children may experience after contact to ferocity in the news (Cantor & Nathanson, 1996). Children may internalise scary stories, important to worries that bad effects will occur to them (Moyer-Gusé, 2007). A connected concern is that lacking of protection, children may observe the world to be a “confusing, threatening, or unfriendly place” (Gavin, 2011). The suggested therapeutic reply is to inspire parents and other adults to have a conversation to children about the news, in age-appropriate conducts, to give emotional care and alleviate worries.

In this research a majority of children in this sample stated being exposed to the news (83.5%), and 100% of all children described being exposed to sensitive news. Majority of the children mentioned that news of murder caused psychological impact on them. This dissimilarities with previous studies that found personal or stranger violence as the news topic most likely to be stated as producing anxiety (Cantor and Nathanson, 1996). Some of the children in this study reported that they are having fear response after that.

One of the assistances of this research is that it allowed e the children to define, in their own words, the kinds of news content that produced anxiety. Asking children to intricate on their responses reduces the problem of bias responses. Still, a qualitative analysis of the open-ended answers exposed a level of element in children's recalls that might be particularly alarming for parents, who may be astonished to learn that their children are recalling vivid, graphic details from the television news.

The open-ended queries also revealed youngsters' apprehension for their personal security. Accident and Kidnapping stories were often quoted news area, after news of murder producing fear responses, and numerous children penned about bad persons who were “on the loose” or close their homes. Even natural catastrophes that cannot happen in the children's area were referenced as immediate actions. Clearly, news actions that are supposed to occurr close to home and those that recommend a bad person is “at large” are particularly scary for children. Parents should give additional attention when their children are uncovered to stories of this nature.

One constraint of asking children to define alarming new stories in their own words is that we cannot test the accuracy of their memories. Certainly, researchers from a wide diversity of disciplines are attentive in understanding the accuracy of children's memoirs for previous events. Thus, if a child reasons he or she recalls seeing somebody thrust a weapon down another's throat on the news, that reminiscence can have an impression on him or her even if the particular of the news event are not properly recalled.

Another matter is the trustworthiness of children's self-reports in over-all finding. In this study, researchers did not use numerous trials to measure the trustworthiness of children's replies; relatively, each query was measured only once. Additionally, researchers did not describe the term news for children when they enquired them about their experience to the news. Thus, youngsters' information of their news exposure may echo an imprecise consideration of what the news is, particularly in the case of younger children. Though, an inspection of the open-ended replies proposes that children were memorizing news reports, rather than fictional media. Most of the themes quoted as causing fear were themes one would imagine to see on the news (e.g., murder, rape, accident, robberies, natural disasters, and kidnappings), and varied from those in fictional media that cause fear in children (e.g., monsters and ghosts). This proposes that the children who presented up specific news events understood what was intended when we asked about “the news.”

IMPLICATION:

· Parents should take special cautions when they are watching this kind of sensitive news

· If the child is repeatedly talking about the news, then parents should talk to him and that may reduce the impact

· Media houses will also think how to telecast the news.

CONCLUSION:

In conclusion, this study delivers further indication of children's expressive reactions to a altering television news scenery. Children were most likely to be scared by stories about murder, accident, rape, natural disasters, kidnappings, and reports of people being killed or hurt in general. Parents need to be aware of their children's exposure levels and fright reactions to the news, and future research should focus more on the strategies parents can use to protect their children from negative emotional reactions. Even the media house will also think how to telecast the news. Children suggested the how to telecast the news or after telecasting what will be the possible way to reduce psychological impact on them.

REFERENCE:

1. Cantor, J., and Nathanson, A. Children’s fright reactions to television news. Journal of Communication. 1996; 46(4): 139–52.

2. Ebbinkhuijsen, M., Bevelander, K. E., Buijzen, M. and Kleemans, M. Children’s emotions after exposure to news: investigating chat conversations with peers as a coping strategy. Journal of Youth and Adolescence. 2021; 50(7): 1424-1436.

3. Gavin, M. L. (2011). How to talk to your child about the news. Retrieved from KidsHealth: http://kidshealth.org/parent/positive/talk/news.html#

4. Lemish, D. What is news?: A cross-cultural examination of kindergartners’ understanding of news. Communication: European Journal of Communication Research. 1998; 23(4): 491–504.

5. Moyer-Gusé, E. A. TV news and coping: Parents’ use of strategies for reducing children’s news-induced fears. In D. L. Götz (Ed.), Children and media in times of war and conflict. 2007; 267–86. Creskill, NJ: Hampton.

6. Piaget, J. (1969). The origins of intelligence in the child. New York: International University Press.

7. Staksrud, E. (2013). Children in the online world: Risk, regulation, rights. Taylor and Francis.

8. van der Molen, J. H. and Konijn, E. A. (2007). Dutch children’s emotional reactions to news about war in Iraq: Influence of media exposure, identification, and empathy. In N. H. Creskill and D. L. Götz (Ed.), Children and media in times of war and conflict (pp. 75-98).

9. Van Der Molen, J. W. Violence and suffering in television news: Toward a broader conception of harmful television content for children. Paediatrics. 2004; 112(6): 1771–75.

Received on 26.06.2024 Modified on 14.07.2024

Asian Journal of Management. 2024;15(3):266-270.

DOI: 10.52711/2321-5763.2024.00042