Media-Induced Fright Reactions In A Sample Of US Elementary School Children

Television is the platform where most people consume media. As a result, many television viewers are frequently exposed to violence. A large portion of the violent media displayed on television is made up of realistic content such as the news and documentaries, accompanied by fictional television series and movies. Since, violent content is constantly being displayed, it is only a matter of time before some of the viewers are affected by the high quantity of exposure. Although, a more important issue could be connected to the age of the viewer rather than just the quantity. Now, there are multiple televisions in a majority of households, on top of that viewers can access television and movies from other devices. This means children and younger

However, researchers, Cantor, Byrne, Moyer-Guse, and Riddle; directly worked with children rather than obtain data by going through their parents. Also in order to stay ethical they did not show visuals or ask questions that would intent to scare the children, instead they devised questions that made them recall something they considered scary. Then use a open end response section to go into detail about what they found scary or how they felt. A total of 219 children from two California elementary school were used for this study. The results of this study concluded that most children were scared of a movie that they had watched, many of these movies were older, meaning they must have been rentals or a television rerun. Also a majority of the movies that the children listed were PG-13 or rated R, which means they were watching movies well outside the recommended age range. The questions that corresponded to the movies, helped prove that the children were affected by their horrifying viewing experience. Many children claimed they had fearful feelings, didn’t want to go to sleep or sleep alone, they couldn’t stop thinking about the movie, were scared of the dark/night. It seems that violent media had a lasting affect on these children seeing as they were able to vividly remember their experiences and it developed a fear in them that didn’t originally exists. Plus it’s worrying that children were able to view inappropriate movies, their parents should keep a closer eye on their children's media usage. It is important to keep in mind some children found G rated movies scary, this could be a result of ratings not holding up to it’s standards, meaning movies are getting more violent at lower