Is it just me? Or is anyone else disturbed about the practice of cable news shows featuring video loops of violent and disturbing footage as they describe related news reports? Yesterday CNBC was on (my husband watches the financial market openings in the morning), and they were reporting on the riots in Greece. There was a small amount of footage of rioters throwing rocks and smashing windows, and police in riot gear responding. Although there were only a few seconds of images, the disturbing footage was looped repetitively at the center of the screen, between the charts, the crawls of stock prices, and the talking heads, who were droning on about the expected impact of the Greek crisis on world markets.

I agree that the footage of rioters has news value.  Wouldn’t dream of arguing that it be kept off TV. But looping it is an “aesthetic” decision.  It’s been decided that talking heads and charts aren’t enough to maintain the coveted viewer’s attention.

Maybe they don’t care, but they should know that these disturbing visual images make it harder to focus on and absorb their verbal content.  But beyond that, viewers should know that repetitive exposure to visual images of violence and hostility causes stress.  Not only does it raise your blood pressure while watching, the effects often carry over beyond viewing, leaving you feeling unnecessarily anxious and uptight.

What can you do?

• Consider avoiding programs that replay disturbing images gratuitously (beyond their news value)
• Write, email, or tweet programs and let them know you don’t appreciate their practices

They’re your eyeballs … and it’s your mind, after all …

An new study in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, (reported on PsychCentral.com) reports that in a sample of more than 800 college students from around the country, the more time students spent playing video games, the poorer the quality of their relationships with their parents and peers.  This finding occurred to the surprise and disappointment of one of the authors, a graduate student. Of course, it’s unclear from a study like this whether video game play harms relationships by taking time away from interpersonal contact or whether students with poor relationships turn to video games to fill their empty time. The researchers suggest that it may be a curvilinear relationship.

But leaving aside the video game debate (and especially the violent video game debate that I’ve discussed before), I’ve been wondering about how much our constant connection to electronic gadgets in general interferes with that old-fashioned face-to-face communication that our brains were designed for. Of course, the more time we spend on solitary pursuits, the less time we have for each other.  But even when we’re in electronic contact with our friends and families — when we email, IM, twitter, and even call each other on our cellphones, we miss face-to-face communication. We can’t see how the other person is responding to what we say — are they understanding us? are they bored? are we on the same page? And they can’t see our arched eyebrow to know we’re just kidding, or our quivering lip to know we’re nervous or distressed.  

And we can’t share smiles! Brain research shows that when we smile and when we see someone genuinely smile at us, certain reward centers in the brain become active, and this makes us feel great. We lose this when we communicate mainly via our gadgets. Of course, our gadgets let us stay in contact with many more people, and with people who are far away, whom we may get to see only on rare occasions.  But if electronic communication becomes the main way we connect, we lose something very important.

The next time you have to stand in a long checkout line, rather than whipping out your cell phone and making a call to someone you know, try engaging the person behind you in a pleasant conversation (even if it’s about the weather or the length of the line!), and then give a big smile to the checker — no matter how sullen or bored she looks — and see if you can get her to smile back.  You’ll be surprised how wonderful this feels.

Commonsense Media has just put out a report about the prevalence of ads during NFL games that are inappropriate for children, millions of whom are in the TV audience. The report complains about ads for erectile dysfunction drugs like Viagra, and it also criticizes the violence and sex that is portrayed in many of the ads. The violence is especially a problem, because macho sports are a prime locus for advertising violent movies, many of which display  some of their most violent and disturbing content in their TV ads. My own research shows that  children often end up with nightmares and intense, long-term anxieties as the result of viewing scenes from movies and that this sometimes happens from mere exposure to an ad for the movie. The alcohol ads that relate booze to having fun and being sexy or cool are also problematic for young teens who are in the process of forming many of their attitudes about appropriate behaviors. I must say, however, that although I don’t like the Viagra and Cialis ads (they make me feel like I’m observing behavior that was really meant to be private), these ads show a side of sexuality rarely seen on television — that is, not-so-young couples in apparently committed relationships who  like each other and are eager to experience their loving feelings toward one another, even when there are physical difficulties.  So maybe that part isn’t all bad.  It will be interesting to see what mix of ads we’ll get for the Superbowl.

Today’s New York Times has an article by Judith Warner talking about how her 8-year-old daughter can’t get the news out of her head about the man who was trampled to death at Wal-Mart. Warner’s daughter’s reaction is not surprising because this is the type of news story that a child of her age is likely to take to heart: It could happen to anyone, and particularly to a child. Warner thinks her daughter’s reaction might have stemmed from her own intense reaction, which she displayed in front of her child.  This is likely because after 9/11, children were especially disturbed by seeing their parents’ intense fear and distress.

You can’t shield children from all negative news, but Warner asks: “What if your child always observes the worst?”  This mother is wise to protect her child, when she can, from the horrors her daughter doesn’t need to know about until she’s older. She’s also right to recognize that her daughter’s incessant questions mean that she is struggling to come to terms with the story and trying to get her feelings under control.

Because of my research expertise, I’ve been giving advice on helping children handle difficult news stories since the publication of my parenting book “Mommy, I’m Scared,” and you can find general recommendations on my web site, in a post I wrote about the Iraq War, but which has suggestions for dealing with all troubling news stories. In brief, when children ask about disturbing news, we should give them “the calm, unequivocal, limited truth.” They need the truth, but with a positive spin. They desperately want to know why that terrible thing cannot happen to them, and they will benefit from hearing how they can stay safe.  Warner’s instincts as a parent are right on.

All parents should take their child’s worried questions seriously and be patient in answering them — in a calm, reassuring manner. That way, their child will continue to seek them out when they are troubled, and they will benefit from one of the most important types of support a parent can give.  

My children’s book “Teddy’s TV Troubles,” was designed to help parents and young children work through difficult issues they encounter on TV.

The tragic story of the 8-year-old boy who allegedly killed his father and another man is baffling. Although the judge has issued a gag order, some details are trickling out. According to stories in The New York Times, this child used his own gun and killed his father by shooting him at least four times, and a few minutes later did the same to a man who was a boarder in their home.  Although these may have been “impulsive” actions, the type of gun he used was a single-action .22 caliber shot gun that required him to “eject the shell from the rifle and put in a new shell each time he fired.”  This means the child would have to have seen the effects of each of his shots before shooting again.

Whenever something like this happens, people naturally wonder why. There’s never one reason.  Lots of horrible influences undoubtedly come together when a horrific event like this occurs. Of course, if the child hadn’t had a gun it is unlikely he would have been able to overpower two grown men no matter how strongly he was motivated to hurt them. In addition, a normal eight-year-old has a very immature sense of the world and has only recently acquired a grasp of the distinction between fantasy and reality. Being a hunter, he would have had some experience with the shooting and killing of animals, but he may not have a very sophisticated appreciation for the implications of human death.

But at any age, seeing a person you know, a family member, shot to death should naturally cause shock, fear, and revulsion. Why that did not happen in this case, or why it didn’t happen strongly enough to stop the child from continuing his methodical rampage is hard to fathom.   According to his mother, he was “a ‘normal boy’ who played video games nonstop.” We don’t know what types of games he played, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess they were more likely to resemble “Resident Evil” than “Dance Dance Revolution.” There is a great deal of evidence that violent videogames promote desensitization to the horrors of violence by allowing participants to “blow away” their enemies in a fantasy world made explicit. We don’t know if this was the case here, and there may well be other explanations, but the situation described by police reports should make any reasonable person wonder what in the child’s background could possibly account for the level of desensitization he appears to have experienced. 

To all the violent videogame enthusiasts waiting to pounce on me for “scapegoating” their pastime or advocating censorship, I’m doing neither.