You know what really irks me? People who tell me they never read the news because it’s too negative.
Don’t we, as citizens of the world, need to know what’s going on, even if it’s bad?
That said, wow, it’s been bad lately. Reports of the post-earthquake and -tsunami deaths in Japan really choke me up.
But it’s not just hard to take in. There’s also so much more of it. News used to be limited, but now we get it all day long from any number of sources. Does witnessing harm to people – through news reports or other violent images – have serious health effects?
Can media make you sick?
What The Experts Say
“What you watch is easily internalized. Your emotions [match] what you see. You start to worry about similar things happening to you. Physical illness is a likely result of too much exposure to this kind of news and entertainment. When physicians study the effects of stress on disease in a laboratory, they often use stressful movies as a stimulus. It’s a given that this is very efficient. Just watching a movie can cause stress reactions. Not everybody is going to get sick, but it’s a contributing factor if there are other stressful conditions, it might just push you over the top.”
JOANNE CANTOR, professor emerita, University of Wisconsin, Madison, president, Your Mind on Media, Madison, Wisconsin
“We looked at the physiological responses of students in a lab setting before and after exposure to either a news or a comedy clip. After exposure to the news, levels of the stress hormone cortisol did not increase, but participants reported a significant decrease in joy and an increase in restlessness. It may be helpful for future researchers to investigate the cumulative effects of watching the news in a natural setting. We also found that after watching a comedy clip, participants reported a decrease in tiredness, sadness, irritation, anxiety and restlessness as well as an increase in relaxation and joy.”
AMANDA J. RAGONESI, psychologist, Vancouver, Washington
“[A researcher] compared clips of movies with in-your-face violence to control clips with equal amounts of movement – sport events, dancing. He determined that the brain response to the violent clips was quite different. These engaged the orbital frontal cortex to a much greater extent, suggesting that the violence engaged areas of the brain associated with emotional control. Does this mean someone exposed to violence in movies is going to be more susceptible to engaging in violence? No. But, it’s significant that aggressive, violent content affects these areas. This is an area to investigate further.”
JOY HIRSCH, professor of functional neuroradiology, neuroscience and psychology, Columbia University Medical Center, New York City
“Our study found an increase in salivary alpha-amylase, salivary cortisol and heart rate variability due to violent media viewing. Alpha-amylase and heart rate variability indicate immediate effects of stress experiences, while cortisol increases require more serious stressors and longer stress exposures to emerge. It would be an extrapolation to conclude that violent media leads to sickness, because we have no direct data. On the other hand, stress experiences over extended periods may increase the likelihood that stress-related symptoms emerge.”
ARNOLD LOHAUS, faculty of psychology and sports science, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany
