Page 309 - Media Effects Advances in Theory and Research

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fear decreased as the child’s age increased, and the tendency to mention
fictional offerings, depicting events that could possibly occur, increased.
Again, Sparks (1986) replicated these findings using children’s self-
reports. Further support for this generalization comes from a study of
children’s fright responses to television news (Cantor & Nathanson,
1996). A random survey of parents of children in kindergarten, second,
fourth, and sixth grades showed that fear produced by fantasy programs
decreased as the child’s grade increased, whereas fear induced by news
stories increased with age. Valkenburg, Cantor, and Peeters (2000), in a
random survey of Dutch children, also found a decrease between the ages
of 7and 12 in fright responses to fantasy content.

Responses to Abstract Threats. The third generalization from
research is that as children mature, they become frightened by media
depictions involving increasingly abstract concepts. This generalization is
clearly consistent with the general sources of children’s fears, cited earlier.
It is also consistent with theories of cognitive development (e.g., Flavell,
1963), which indicate that the ability to think abstractly emerges relatively
late in cognitive development.
Data supporting this generalization come from a survey of children’s
responses to the television movie The Day After, which depicted the dev-
astation of a Kansas community by a nuclear attack (Cantor et al., 1986).
In a random telephone survey of parents, conducted the night after the
broadcast of this movie, children under 12 were reportedly much less dis-
turbed by the film than were teenagers, and parents were the most dis-
turbed. The very youngest children seem to have been the least fright-
ened. The findings seem to be due to the fact that the emotional impact of
the film comes from the contemplation of the potential annihilation of the
earth as we know it—a concept that is beyond the grasp of the young
child. The visual depictions of injury in the movie were quite mild com-
pared to what most children have become used to seeing on television.
A study of children’s reactions to television coverage of the war in the
Persian Gulf also supports the generalization that, as they mature, chil-
dren are increasingly responsive to abstract as opposed to concrete
aspects of frightening media (Cantor, Mares, & Oliver, 1993). In a random
survey of parents of children in public school in Madison, Wisconsin, con-
ducted shortly after the Gulf War, there were no significant differences
between 1st, 4th, 7th, and 11th graders in the prevalence or intensity of
negative emotional reactions to television coverage of the war. However,
children in different grades were upset by different aspects of the cover-
age. Parents of younger children, but not of adolescents, stressed the
visual aspects of the coverage and the direct, concrete consequences of
combat (e.g., the missiles exploding) in their descriptions of the elements