Graphic images taking toll
by
Thel Krollig
Children
are increasingly at risk of distress from exposure to graphic images of war
zones, terrorist attacks, and speculation about Australia as a target for
terrorism, according to a leading UniSA academic.
Senior lecturer in education Dr Susan Howard says speculation about
Australia as a target for terrorist attacks, together with violent images
coming out of the Middle East, could easily increase children's sense of
insecurity about their own safety – especially with young children up to the
age of five or six years.
Dr Howard said that in a five-year study titled Somewhere to call home? Schooling and a sense of place and belonging in an increasingly globalised world, (coauthored with Judith Gill) upper primary school children identified being safe, proud and free as key factors high on the list of what being Australian meant to them.
“While 'proud' and 'free' 'might have been anticipated,” she said, “the strong emphasis on safety surprised us. It was clear from the children's discussions that their sense of Australia being a safe place was principally drawn from a comparison with other countries where violence of all kinds is reported and graphically depicted on the nightly news.
“The persistent chain of terrorist attacks since September 11, 2001 has left the global community feeling vulnerable – but none more so than our children. They have been bombarded with images and reports about terrorism, the War on Terror, the war in Iraq, the Bali and Madrid bombings and now graphic pictures coming out of the Middle East conflict,” said Dr Howard.
Even young children are quite capable of discriminating between degrees of reality in television images, according to Dr Howard.
“Five year olds judge TV reality on a continuum with cartoons (totally unreal) at one end and the news (totally real) at the other,” she says. “The extent to which media images disturb or distress young children will depend on how 'real' they judge the images, how close they perceive the violence to be and whether the violence is occurring to someone they may know or someone like them.”
Dr Howard said recent war images that would have had a strong potential for causing fear and anxiety in children were those depicting the young, distressed Palestinian 'suicide bomber' shown in the media several weeks ago. The age of the boy and his evident distress would have been uncomfortably recognisable for younger children.
It is important then, says Dr Howard, to protect young children from detailed or graphic information about terrorism and war zones, particularly images which offer strong points of identification for the child viewers. Older children, however, should be given plenty of opportunities to discuss what they see and to debrief after particularly distressing material. Teachers, parents and carers have an important role to play in sharing information and explaining the causes of conflict and war.
“It is important that they place these events in a global perspective and try to give a simple straight forward explanation, free of prejudice and subjective opinion.
“Older children are certainly in a position to understand and think about the issues but we did find in the study cited above that perceptions of violence and oppression were frequently linked to irrelevant points of 'difference' between Australians and other people (e.g. styles of dress). Here we have fertile ground for the development of prejudice and we need to take firm action to avoid this.
“Children need to understand that life is full of dangers, but they should also put those dangers in perspective so that they can engage in every life without fear.”
Since this interview was conducted photos of prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq have been made public. Dr Howard says that while many war photos don’t provide young children with points for identification, these images – naked bodies being piled in pyramids in what could be a game; terrified men being threatened with fierce dogs – are of a different order. How do we explain to children what we can barely understand ourselves? “I think the answer must be to tell the truth but keep it as simple as possible,” says Dr Howard. “‘These are soldiers and they are supposed to be guarding these men who are prisoners but they are hurting and frightening them instead. This is wrong and now we know, we expect that they will be punished.’”