Background. The high importance of the media as an institution of socializing the new generation in the modern information society is highlighted. Along with positive opportunities created by the media and the Internet for training and education, it is necessary to point to the growing risks associated with the ambiguity of the impact of the media on the mental and psychological health and also child and adolescent development.
The Objective of the paper is to consider the risks of socialization associated with the openness and accessibility of the information space. There are psychological features of child and adolescent perception of information products containing aggression and violence, information products of sexual content, products that cause fear and anxiety, and also methods used in the media to justify morally antisocial, deviant, aggressive behaviour and violence.
The Results of the analysis allowed to identify the conditions that determine the degree of vulnerability of the child to violence in media and the desire to mimic aggressive behavior and also forms of cognitive restructuring the moral content of aggressive and deviant behaviour.
The negative consequences of perceiving violence expressed in behaviour, emotional state and cognitive image of the world of children are determined. The effects of adolescent perception of information of sexual content are revealed. Age features of experiencing fears in children aged 3-18 years are shown.
Conclusion. Perceiving violence in the information space by children and adolescents creates risks of mimicking aggressive behaviour, fears and increased anxiety, desensitization to phenomena of violence and aggression and distortion of the worldview, when violence is perceived as a compulsory and natural regulation of relations between people in society. Factors influencing the nature of the perception of violence include age factor, individual psychological and personality features, motives and preferences, genre of information products and the context within which violence is depicted.
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Keywords: perception of information products; adolescence; child age; media violence; aggression; fear and anxiety; moral justification of aggression;
Available Online 30.09.2018
Table. 1. Age features of experiencing ears in children aged 3 to 18 years
|
Child’s Age |
3-7 years |
8-12 years |
12-15 years |
15-18 years |
|
Objects that cause major fear |
Monsters, ghosts, supernatural beings, darkness, animals, strange-looking creatures and fast-moving creatures |
Diseases, injuries or death that threatens children or their relations, wars, natural disasters, catastrophes |
Diseases, injuries or death that threatens children or their relations, social fears (rejection, non-recognition of social negative assessment), wars, natural disasters, catastrophes |
Social fears, death, physical suffering, social political, economic, disasters |
|
Fear of a certain type of harm |
Physical harm |
Physical harm Psychological harm |
Psychological harm Physical harm |
Psychological harm Physical harm |
|
Degree of distinction between reality and fiction |
Low ("naive realism") |
Quite high |
High |
High |
|
Cognitive basis of fear |
Aiming at physical qualities of the object |
Aiming at the functions of the object, high level of generalization, transferring experience of others to one's own destiny |
Aiming at object functions, high level of generalization, ability to construct hypotheses, reasoning and forecasting |
Inclusion of events in a broad social context, ability to construct hypotheses and their proof, reasoning and forecasting |
|
Coping with fear |
Physical Care Visual desensitization Social and emotional support Transactional object |
Cognitive strategies(explanation of threat probability, distinction of fiction and reality) |
Cognitive strategies Self-regulation |
Cognitive strategies Self-regulation |
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