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Youth Anxiety About Political News

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Abstract

This study assessed youth anxiety about political issues and associated characteristics. Caregivers (N = 374) were recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk and reported on their child’s anxiety about 15 voting issues covered in the media since the 2016 presidential election as well as their child’s psychological functioning and their own trait anxiety. For the majority of voting issues, over 50% of caregivers indicated that their child experienced at least one related worry; worries about the environment and gun violence were most common. Youth empathy and intolerance of uncertainty were each positively associated with worry about political issues but did not predict such worry after accounting for the effect of youth trait anxiety. Youth with clinical levels of generalized anxiety experienced more severe worry about political issues than did youth with minimal/subthreshold anxiety. Future studies should identify strategies for mitigating the negative impact of political news on youth with anxiety disorders.

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Notes

  1. Analyses were repeated with the 12-item IUSC total score. Results generally converged and are available upon request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Dr. Kevin Arcineaux, Dr. Colleen Cummings, Dr. Kendra Read, Dr. Erica R. Shapiro, Loie Faulkner, Sara Hassan, and Nancy Perez for their comments/assistance with this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, American University, 4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC, 20016, USA

    Nicole E. Caporino & Shannon Exley

  2. Department of Psychology, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Robert D. Latzman

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  1. Nicole E. Caporino
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  2. Shannon Exley
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Correspondence to Nicole E. Caporino.

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Dr. Caporino has received grant funding from the American Psychological Foundation and the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation, and an honorarium from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Ms. Exley and Dr. Latzman declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Caporino, N.E., Exley, S. & Latzman, R.D. Youth Anxiety About Political News. Child Psychiatry Hum Dev 51, 683–698 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-020-00972-z

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