Ebbinkhuijsen Ming, Buijzen Moniek, de Leeuw Rebecca, Kleemans Mariska
Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands.
School of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands.
Front Psychol. 2022 Jun 22;13:889096. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.889096. eCollection 2022.
Despite growing concerns that children (8-13 years old) tend to avoid the news, the reasons why have received little research attention. Therefore, the current study aims to develop and test a model conceptualizing the relations between children's news consumption, news avoidance, emotional responses (negative emotions and anxiety-related behaviors), and parent and child mitigation strategies. The model was tested using data collected during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The current, preregistered, survey study was part of a longitudinal project and used data from the second wave. Data were collected in November/December 2020 among 510 children ( = 10.40; 53.72% girls). Findings showed that children who consumed more news during the pandemic avoided pandemic news less often. Children who experienced more anxiety-related behaviors regarding pandemic news avoided pandemic news more often. The relation between news consumption and emotional responses was stronger for children who experienced restrictive parental mediation more often, indicating that this was not an effective parental mediation strategy for tempering their emotional responses. Children with higher levels of emotional responses used reactive coping strategies more often. However, this did not seem to be an effective strategy against pandemic news avoidance because none of the strategies had a negative relation with pandemic news avoidance. Distancing was even positively related to pandemic news avoidance. Although the current study was not able to fully unravel how news avoidance-related constructs relate to one another, we were able to get some important insights guiding future research. Specifically, it is of crucial importance to unravel the mechanisms that increase the chance of children's news avoidance and those that mitigate it, to build interventions to counteract news avoidance and to protect children from the negative emotional consequences by news consumption.
尽管人们越来越担心8至13岁的儿童倾向于回避新闻，但回避新闻的原因却很少受到研究关注。因此，本研究旨在开发并测试一个模型，该模型将儿童的新闻消费、新闻回避、情绪反应（负面情绪和焦虑相关行为）以及亲子缓解策略之间的关系概念化。该模型使用了在新冠疫情大流行第一年收集的数据进行测试。当前这项预先注册的调查研究是一个纵向项目的一部分，并使用了第二波的数据。数据于2020年11月/12月收集，涉及510名儿童（平均年龄=10.40岁；53.72%为女孩）。研究结果表明，在疫情期间消费新闻较多的儿童较少回避疫情新闻。在疫情新闻方面经历更多焦虑相关行为的儿童更常回避疫情新闻。对于更经常经历限制性父母调解的儿童来说，新闻消费与情绪反应之间的关系更强，这表明这不是一种有效的父母调解策略来缓和他们的情绪反应。情绪反应水平较高的儿童更常使用反应性应对策略。然而，这似乎并不是一种有效对抗回避疫情新闻的策略，因为没有一种策略与回避疫情新闻呈负相关。疏远甚至与回避疫情新闻呈正相关。尽管当前研究无法完全阐明与新闻回避相关的构念之间是如何相互关联的，但我们能够获得一些重要见解来指导未来的研究。具体而言，解开增加儿童新闻回避可能性的机制以及缓和这种可能性的机制、构建应对新闻回避的干预措施以及保护儿童免受新闻消费带来的负面情绪后果至关重要。
