Breaking News: Media Negatively Impacts People
When I was younger, I stood on my tippy toes to reach the top of the television while stretching my arms up to put the VHS tape into the player. This massive TV was at least five feet tall and three feet wide with a big screen. My parents proudly placed it in the corner and moved all the furniture in a semicircle around it. When flat screens came along, we hauled the huge one down to the curb and replaced it with one that gave us more room, better quality, and most importantly, an even bigger picture. Five TV sets in my house tops the Nielsen’s Television Audience Report of 2009 which shows the average American home has 2.86 TV sets (More Than Half of the Homes in the US 1). This large number …show more content…
A constant barrage of negative news produces feelings of stress, sadness, and anxiety. These negative moods it creates in a person increases thoughts about their own life’s stresses and worries. In an article on the psychological effects of TV, Graham Davey described a study in which three groups each watched a different type of news bulletin: positive, neutral, and negative news stories. The people in the group that were exposed to negative news stories reported higher levels of sadness than the other groups. Then, when they were asked about their problems, they spent more time embellishing and catastrophizing them (1). The study concluded, “so not only are negatively valenced news broadcasts likely to make you sadder and more anxious, they are likely to exacerbate your own personal worries and anxieties” (Davey 1). The pattern of projecting emotions from news reports onto personal experiences is apparent in another study conducted in 2013 after the bombing of the Boston Marathon. The study was taken online by 4,675 adults and those who did not have any personal experience with the bombing were asked how many hours of news coverage had they viewed on the Boston Marathon. Individuals who had viewed 6 or more hours of the coverage were nine times more likely to report higher levels of acute stress than those who had watched less than 6 hours (Kim 1). The tragic events of the Boston marathon played out as it happened on national news. Watching stressful events and feeling part of that experience causes emotional stress and worry about their own personal
When I was younger, I stood on my tippy toes to reach the top of the television while stretching my arms up to put the VHS tape into the player. This massive TV was at least five feet tall and three feet wide with a big screen. My parents proudly placed it in the corner and moved all the furniture in a semicircle around it. When flat screens came along, we hauled the huge one down to the curb and replaced it with one that gave us more room, better quality, and most importantly, an even bigger picture. Five TV sets in my house tops the Nielsen’s Television Audience Report of 2009 which shows the average American home has 2.86 TV sets (More Than Half of the Homes in the US 1). This large number …show more content…
A constant barrage of negative news produces feelings of stress, sadness, and anxiety. These negative moods it creates in a person increases thoughts about their own life’s stresses and worries. In an article on the psychological effects of TV, Graham Davey described a study in which three groups each watched a different type of news bulletin: positive, neutral, and negative news stories. The people in the group that were exposed to negative news stories reported higher levels of sadness than the other groups. Then, when they were asked about their problems, they spent more time embellishing and catastrophizing them (1). The study concluded, “so not only are negatively valenced news broadcasts likely to make you sadder and more anxious, they are likely to exacerbate your own personal worries and anxieties” (Davey 1). The pattern of projecting emotions from news reports onto personal experiences is apparent in another study conducted in 2013 after the bombing of the Boston Marathon. The study was taken online by 4,675 adults and those who did not have any personal experience with the bombing were asked how many hours of news coverage had they viewed on the Boston Marathon. Individuals who had viewed 6 or more hours of the coverage were nine times more likely to report higher levels of acute stress than those who had watched less than 6 hours (Kim 1). The tragic events of the Boston marathon played out as it happened on national news. Watching stressful events and feeling part of that experience causes emotional stress and worry about their own personal