Does Scary TV Really Affect Children As Much As We Think?

by Monica Joshi

As a 90s kid, I grew up with Goosebumps on TV. Make fun all you like, but I remember watching the one about dolls coming to life and then having to sleep with my parents that night. Now it seems like the impact of scary TV on children's well being has been overstated - at least violent scary TV, that is.

According to new research from the University of Sussex, children overall show very little signs of increased anxiety, fear, sadness or sleep problems after watching a scary program or film. Laura Pearce, University of Sussex research student, and Andy Field, Professor of Child Psychopathology at the university, analyzed all research on the topic carried out over the past 25 years.

With regards to the new findings that children are fairly resilient to the scary things they might find on TV, Professor Field said:

"Across studies, scary TV had an impact on children’s well being but it was fairly small on average, suggesting that most children are not affected very much at all.”

Their findings, published in the journal Human Communication Research, suggest that although fear and anxiety among children and teenagers are on the rise, it is far too simplistic to place all the blame for this rise on increased exposure to violence on TV.

Professor Field claims that:
"We need to do more research into why particular children can be severely affected by particular content on TV. What is it about the media or about those individuals that causes this reaction? There is good reason to believe, for example, that already anxious and/or introverted children might be less resilient to scary content. "

These personality differences, potential genetic predispositions to anxiety, and other variables need to be studied in order to get a better picture of what specific parts of "scary TV" cause children to be anxious.

Field adds further that:

"Once we know why certain children are more affected by what they watch than others, we can give more specific and useful advice to parents, rather than assuming that all scary TV is bad for all children, which this analysis shows is not the case.”

The researchers were quick to emphasize that TV guidelines nowadays focus on violent content at the expense of non-violent but frightening content. In other words, TV guidelines tend to focus on worrying news reports or content depicting psychological stress or phobias.

While it seems like the effect of scary TV on children's anxiety is present at the group level, policy makers need to focus on TV guidelines that can actually encompass not just violence, but also scariness that is present on TV without violence. As children spend roughly 20 – 30 hours per week watching some form of TV, this research is vital not only in creating better TV guidelines, but also in understanding the kind of TV shows that might cause anxiety or distress in young kids.

More research on the specific age groups and their tolerance to a certain kind of scariness could be useful in further streamlining the guidelines. It would also be useful to have more research done on the amount of time spent watching a certain level of scary TV and the long-term effects of it, i.e. do children become desensitized to a certain "scariness factor" after prolonged exposure.