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How constant exposure to doom-and-gloom can affect your child.

For my first blog entry, I decided to write about my own personal experience with the effects of overexposure to doom-and-gloom, something that is quite relevant in today’s high-tech-social-media driven culture. I found it very cathartic and enlightening. I hope it can do the same for you.

My Childhood Background.

I was born in 1964. Not quite in the Baby Boomer (Hippie) Era, but not quite Generation X either. I identify as a hippie; a tie-dye wearing, tree-hugging, meditating adult who leans more to the Liberal Left… Until I moved out to the Pacific Northwest and met the “Portlandians”. Gracious. Maybe I am more Conservative than I thought.

My California Youth…

I spent my formative years in Southern California, from ages five to fifteen. My college educated parents sold real estate and did well. We traveled a lot when I was growing up; mostly in the US, but a little in Mexico and Canada. Dad loved to charter boats and fish so we fished in the deep sea, we hiked and we camped. I did musical performances in summer school, and participated in plays in Junior High and High school. I was moderately active in the Girl Scouts. Your “typical” middle class childhood.

Being a Farm Girl…

This changed when my parents decided to reconnect with their Hoosier past. Mother Earth magazines, the Foxfire series… They bought a wheat mill, I made bread from scratch. When the time came, they bought 120 acres of land in the Midwest. Understandably, I went through a culture shock. I went from riding on my 10 speed bike through the lovely rolling hills of Southern California, shopping at South Coast Plaza, eating escargot with my parents when they couldn’t get a babysitter for business dinners… To riding in a small school bus that would pick me up at our trailer which was THREE MILES off a paved road, TWENTY MILES from the nearest town. The other kids on the bus were tobacco chewing, gun toting, chocolate gravy eating individuals that I had issue connecting with. Hmmm… I wonder why? I solved that dilemma by riding to town with my mother. She worked at the local bank and we would arrive two hours before school started. I would then sit outside the high school until the doors opened. Reverse that process to get home. Yeah, culture shock.

Psst… Chocolate gravy is a real thing in the (south) Midwest. Look it up.

My first year there, in the Midwest, was as a Sophomore. I joined the track team, like I had done in California. I was given the nickname “California” by the highschool track coach and team. It didn’t stick, but I can still claim it. I did make friends, avoided theater due to the teacher involved, and made it to the Honor Roll Society due to my grades.

Visiting Girl…

My Junior year there, my travel passion kicked in so we hosted a girl from Central America. She was SUCH a good sport, living with us in our small trailer. My Hoosier parents were going ALL OUT so we were raising chickens and pigs, cutting wood, burning wood piles, making rock walls, butchering the chickens and pigs, and gardening. As I write this, it dawned on me that the wood cutting and rock wall building sounded like a work gang scene from some period piece about prison life: cut to Shawshank Redemption. But, no, this is typical farm life. Our water was pumped from a windmill, we were on a party line, going to town was a major ordeal, and we bathed in bowls when the water table dropped below the windmill’s reach. I repeat, she was SUCH a good sport!

Traveling Girl…

My senior year, I went to the United Kingdom as an exchange student. I both loved and hated it. My first host family had some more-severe-than-normal familial issues, so I switched families halfway through the year. But being a mild Anglophile, living there was fabulous; especially when I could travel around and see such iconic places as The Giants Causeway, Westminster Abbey and the Roman Baths. The educational system there was TOTALLY different than in the United States. I was the right age for their 6^th Form level, but their curriculum was more extensive than ours, so I took 6^th Form English and 5^th Form Math and Science. I sat the ONE exam you take at the end of FOUR or SIX years of schooling. I passed all of my subjects. Yay! Please note, I was in the UK for the 1981-82 school year, when the sixth form college was set up for a four-year test, ordinary O levels, and six-year test, advanced A levels.

At this point in my story I have given you a good, generalized idea of my young child-to-teen years and the rather broad experiences I had during those years. This is to establish my “normalcy”, although what IS normal? So what I have established is my Caucasian, middle class, social “normalcy”. Better. Butt… The rather large elephant in the “room” is still missing: you are probably wondering where the title comes from. “Where is Brother Bob?” Where indeed?

My Brother Bob…

My Brother Bob was born in 1957, so not quite seven years my senior, month-wise. This age gap did not lend itself to cordial relations between us. I was the typical “obnoxious little sister” and he was the typical “bully of an older brother”. According to him, I was spoiled. I don’t think so, of course, but what else would an older sibling think? To me, he was the cool-older-brother-who-had-neat-things that I wanted to both emulate and avoid… He could be a little abusive, in the typical I’m-Bigger-and-Older way: but the personal details are not for this story. I am simply trying to establish a little familial history.

I am now onto the actual “meat” of this story, what I see as the actual purpose that may have some relevance to today’s societal issues; from my own personal perspective, of course.

My Negative Childhood Exposure was due to the Environment.

The first EARTH DAY occurred April 22, 1970. My brother would have been 13 at the time and I was six. Socially, he would have been influenced by the news of the day, being old enough to discuss the news with my MENSA father and above average mother. Being six, my interest in the news would have been minimal to non-existent.

Quick side note: intellectually speaking, we are all rather on the higher end of IQs. I asked my mother once what my IQ was. She said she didn’t know. “Why?” Because my brother and I had higher IQs than she and she didn’t want to remember. Her IQ was120.

Great Reasons to Join Mensa | Mensa International

Earth Day: The Official Site | EARTHDAY.ORG

Let me provide a small sample of the political, global and environmental news of 1969:

• Santa Barbara CA Oil Spill, killing 10,000+ animals and creating an 800 square mile oil slick.
• Cuyahoga River Fire OH, which brought about the idea of “environmental justice” in the “urban environment”.
• Richard Nixon was sworn in as President.
• Apollo Moon Landing, July 20th.
• Images of Earth from Space: NASA-Apollo8-Dec24-Earthrise.jpg (2400×2400) (wikimedia.org)
• Stonewall Riots in NYC mark the beginning of the Gay Rights Movement.
• Manson Killings occurred in CA.
• Woodstock Festival in upstate NY.
• Sesame Street premiered. I loved Sesame Street as a kid, and I still have my Kermit!
• The Cold War with Russia, where each side supported major regional conflicts.
• The Vietnam War is ongoing, with the first draft lottery being held since WWII.

Clearly, 1969 was a “busy year” and one with huge variances in positive or negative influences. Understandably, there would be a lot to talk about, think about and worry about. I just hit the highlights that caught my eye while I researched online.

By the time I was ten and older, Earth Day had become an annual celebration. My brother, being the hip, cool teenager, would have had all this and more to influence his political, social and environmental leanings. I am now old enough to become conscious of the wide world about me, being his younger sister in an intellect’s home. As I got older, I would listen to him and his friends and their rather dour prognostications of our global future. To point, my memories are of his foretelling of a sad global future wherein we would have threatening environmental living conditions due to our social lifestyles. He literally kept repeating that “in 50 years” our global future would be threatened.

50 Years Later: Today’s Various Negative Conditions.

Cut to today. Depending on which side of the SCIENCE platform you wish to stand on, my brother would have been “right”. We are slowly loosing our icecaps and our weather patterns are showing this global warming with the level of severe storm-drought-fire occurrences that are in the news. My current home in the Pacific Northwest makes the news annually now with their huge fires in late summer.

NWCC :: Home (nifc.gov)

Homepage | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (noaa.gov)

Effects | Facts – Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet (nasa.gov)

Our biodiversity is showing the effects of global warming and the devastation of “civilized” human practices. Bees are dying due to our “need” for pesticides. Farming practices are creating issues with our food and land use. Our recent fixation with online “influencers” is creating HUGE waste/pollution issues that affect not only the environment but us as well!

9 Ways to Prevent Biodiversity Loss and What Causes It (interestingengineering.com)

Bees and Pesticides – Act for Bees

Environmental Impacts of Agricultural Modifications | National Geographic Society

Fast-Fashion Influencers and their Environmental Impact – One Green Planet

Homepage – Story of Stuff (book and movie)

If reading all these various articles seems overwhelming, I will openly admit I have not read them all “cover to cover”, to use an archaic reference. Of course, there is always the easier method of getting your information: movies and/or documentaries.

Movies – Story of Stuff

Top 15 Environmental Films – IMDb (five of which are biographical)

Now to the underlying focus of this story… Me.

Realizing the Effects of My Childhood Exposure…

I had, up to my mid fifties, always assumed that I was no different than anyone else. I did what was expected of me socially: went to college, got married, had kids, finished my college degree, got a job teaching, got divorced, bought a house, raised my kids as a single mom… I’m sure this list of accomplishments would match any other middle aged adult in the US, give or take your social back ground, gender and career choice. I just know that for myself there was always this underlying feeling of “why bother?”

I always seemed to be “not quite happy” and never felt like I should actually DO the things I REALLY wanted to do because “why bother?” Something would go wrong: financially, personally, career-wise, parental’y. I always believed that the “good life” was for someone else, not me. I will admit that I have a history of ACEs, Adverse Childhood Experiences. There is an informative PBS Newshour series on ACEs that was brief and enlightening:

PBS NewsHour | Invisible Scars | Part 1 | PBS

PBS NewsHour | Invisible Scars | Part 2 | PBS

PBS NewsHour | Invisible Scars | Part 3 | PBS

This aspect of my childhood is noted only to show that the trauma of fear mongering my brother exposed me to in my youth was given “better roots” going into my adulthood due to my own “invisible scars”. I will state, at this point, that my own personal view of childhood is simple: no child makes it out of their childhood “unscathed”. No parent is perfect, no sibling is perfect and no society provides a Utopian setting that is idyllic for all involved. Here in the US we have gender issues, racial issues, poverty issues, gun violence… The list is lengthy. For this story, I will try to remain focused on our societal issues due to fear mongering by social media. That is enough for now.

Personal Healing and My Sabbatical.

Over the years, the strong desire to heal my “invisible scars” grew, and I put great effort into the necessary healing such a past can cause. It wasn’t until I hit my 50’s and was taking a sabbatical from the social convention that is home ownership and the 9 to 5 mentality that I realized just how much that “apocalyptic” fear mongering had had on me as a growing child. The “subtly repeated fears” of my youth have haunted me all of my adult life. Like a little black cloud, it has tempered all of my decisions.

As I’ve aged, I realized that my “future decisions” were being tempered by this internalized “doom clock” and that “my time was running out due to the unknown-out-there things I could not control.” I caught myself thinking why plan to travel to ____? The climate is going to change, and it won’t be the same. Why plan on buying my dream house and property? Where would a good place be to live due to climate change. Why make future plans at all because ____. I filled in the blanks with the “dour prognostications” of my childhood. The issue with FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) was reversed in my case. WBIWE: Why Bother, It Won’t Exist.

Guilty Feelings Because of My Past.

Adding to this undertone of defeatism is a touch of guilt. Did my deep fears of an uncertain future affect my children? It seems it may have. Neither of my children are going to have kids. I will never BE a grandmother. Did my internalized fears drive them to make that decision? OR did they come to that conclusion naturally? And truthfully, I am not heart broken that they did not bring children into this uncertain future. You see? Even now my past is still affecting my attitude. I find this very sad.

I must state, at this point, that I do not blame my Brother Bob for this aspect of my long standing fears. He was repeating what he had heard from those around him. He was simply being the typical teenage know-it-all and trying to share his vast wealth of knowledge with his younger sister.

What About Other Children in Today’s Fear Driven Society.

With the recent global events, my “why bother?” realization lead me to ponder about other young children and the overwhelming fears that they have been exposed to, especially in the last 2-3 years. Not just the more standard fears and traumas of war, famine, street and/or domestic violence and abuse. Those are understandably traumatic and no one would argue their effect on a young child’s life and behaviors.

Constant Exposure to Negative Attitudes.

No, what I am talking about is the subtly repeated fears of an unknown future by the adults in their lives. Of the unknown time span of a mysterious disease that kept children from their friends, teachers and the security of a classroom and regular meals. The mask that was asked of us all to wear to do-our-part to fight the spread of an invisible disease that could kill Grandma… Then the arguments, fights, doubts, public displays of stupidity and weighty decisions of to-vaccinate-or-not-to-vaccinate, that is the question. So much day-to-day fear that was incorporated into a young child’s life today… What will this do to this generation?

How the Pandemic Is Affecting Our Children | Psychology Today

Adding to the fear of an unseen disease is the now HUGE political divide that is creating civil discord here is the US. After the 2016 elections I had coworkers with school aged children talk about how the speech and behavior in the schools had changed with more racist-aggressive rhetoric. And what is spurring this political divide on? Social Media, Fear Mongering, and the internet algorithms. Has our news gathering methods really changed all that much over the years? Yes, quite a bit actually. And has this changed our behavior as a nation? Just look at January 6, 2021. But back to the main idea.

The January 6 Effect: An Evolution of Hate and Extremism | ADL

How We Gather Our News and Engage with Social Media.

The availability of the news has changed drastically over the years. When I was a kid, there were limited station choices. There were antennas, but they did not guarantee your ready access to any channel due to the geography and the weather between you and the local station. News shows only ran a few times a day and all stations went offline sometime after midnight. When you compare this to today’s READY access to ANY media source, the change is dramatic. Access to any form of streaming media is readily available just on your personal cell phone. Add to that the use of laptops, tablets, televisions and even the smart voice activated home devices and anyone can get any information they want, depending on their personal availability, with the occasional comical outcome.

Jimmy Kimmel is Sorry for Setting Off Your Alexa – Bing video

Constant Streaming of Negativity…

This has allowed the news to become available 24/7. People leave the television on their favorite news source “all day”. A streaming source of current events such as gun and/or gang violence, natural disasters, human drama, political upset, foreign affairs, spreading disease, global warming… A plethora of doom and gloom to keep the audience spell bound and “informed”.

How News Has Changed – News (macalester.edu)

How to Cope With Constant Stream of Negative News | Pepperdine Online California

Internet Addiction | Psychology Today

As my own personal experience shows, this constant source of negativity and “impending doom” has long-term negative effects on children, as well as adults. And now, with the heavy use of internet and the algorithms that track our choices, we are led to feel “righteous” about our news sources because the algorithms on the internet lead us to ever tightening spirals of targeted news sources that feed into our beliefs and fears about the outside world.

Opinion Journalism and Doom Scrolling.

Beginning in the early 2000s, we had the start of Opinion Journalism, allowing factual news to be mixed with someone telling us what to think about the news. Free thinking and discerning YOUR OWN opinion about “the facts” has gone to the wayside. Like addicts “taking a hit”, we feel the need to keep doom scrolling so that our need-to-be-informed is steady and our “opinions” about the world are validated. This targeted media supply of fear, pestilence, violence, invasions and whatever other “news” item that gets blown out of proportion just keeps our attention “trapped” and the algorithms supplying us with our next “hit”. Today’s society is being heavily influenced by the constant stream of real or fictionalized drama, fear, war, and “other-ism” that has become our mainstream thought pattern.

What Is Doomscrolling? Why it Happens, How to Stop (health.com)

The Social Dilemma (2020) – IMDb

What to Do about the Overexposure to News/Social Media and Children.

With all this ready availability on any media source, what are we doing to the youthful innocence of childhood? Much like the sound of bullets, the constant barrage of negative, fear mongering news from the television and the significant adults in their lives can have just as devastating of an effect. So what can we, as a society or individuals, do?

TURN IT OFF, whatever “it” is. Go back to the old days of television where the news was only on at set times of the day. PICK A TIME to watch the news and LIMIT THE TIME you watch it. According to the experts, even adults are being affected by the non-stop barrage of negative, violent, disaster ridden fear mongering that has become the news of the 21^st Century. Social media and technology have NOT been our “friends” in that we are being overwhelmed into thinking horrible things are going to happen no matter what, creating desperate behavior and xenophobia.

Understandably, if you feel the need to be moderately aware of the global on-goings, then DON’T talk about your global, political or environmental views (fears?) with your young children. Children don’t have an adults ability to compartmentalize their thoughts and not be overwhelmed by what seems threatening. Remember your bedroom closet? LIMIT THE TIME you let your kids have access to their social media. Ask what they watch. Ask their opinions and try to have a calm dialogue about what they are learning and internalizing. Watch with your children. *Teach your children, and yourself, how to recognize a good source of news from a bad source. Ask them about any potential hope-on-the-horizon and try to avoid the all-doom approach. Take positive action. Volunteer for a cause you believe in. Get your kids involved. Might do you some good as well.

Is Watching the News Bad for Mental Health? (verywellmind.com)

Too much bad news can make you sick | CNN

News and Children (aacap.org)

6 Negative Impacts of Technology on Children (And What You Can Do) (makeuseof.com)

How social media affects children at different ages, and how to protect them (phys.org)

*Know Your News: Recognizing Good & Bad Sources | Monroe County Public Library, Indiana – mcpl.info

*4 ways to differentiate a good source from a bad source (utep.edu)

How Volunteering Can Help Your Mental Health (berkeley.edu)

Conclusion.

My children are now adults, and we have LOTS of talks about our ideas of how the world is doing, news based and our own personal opinions. Just the other day I was talking with my adult son about the social perceptions of today. He talked about how you need “magical glasses” to be able to see the reality of our world. I took the opposite stance in that you need to take off the rose-colored glasses or blinders to be able to see the world as it really is.

Regardless of your personal approach, try to “see” what is really “out there”. Don’t let someone else tell you what to think, what to fear or what to do. Quit talking about “it” all the time, whatever “it” is to you. Try to make sure your children aren’t a part of your adult conversations and concerns. Dig a little deeper if “it” sounds too sensational, because it probably is. Just like our children, we adults need to have hope as well. Try stand in the sunshine and find a little hope every day. Like the P!nk song, we all could use a little sunshine on a daily basis. Smile.

P!nk, Willow Sage Hart – Cover Me In Sunshine (Official Video) – YouTube