How to talk to kids about upsetting and fake news

Experts explain to LISA SALMON how family chats can help children deal with difficult news content

- LISA SALMON

NO matter what their age, it’s hard for children not to see or hear some of the (mostly bad) news we're constantly bombarded with.

And when stories about topics such as war and knife crime dominate the headlines, many children - and not just the younger ones - can become really scared.

A new survey by Picture News, which works with schools to help pupils engage with current affairs, has found more than half of parents (52%) worry about how to explain difficult news stories to their children, and 69% are concerned younger children are accessing news content on social media through older siblings.

But although it’s virtually impossible for parents to protect their kids from being exposed to stories that might upset them, there are ways to help prevent them becoming really frightened by news stories, or misled by fake news, say the experts.

Children’s media literacy expert Katie Harrison, a former primary school teacher and co-founder of Picture News, says: “It’s very difficult now to completely monitor everything children are being exposed to.

“So it’s about developing skills for children and parents. We try and encourage an open culture, and if children have questions or if they've seen something in the news that’s upset them, they feel comfortable about saying it. That starts from parents having really open conversations about what children know about.”

And Professor Vivian Hill, an educational psychologist at the UCL Institute of Education, and a British Psychological Society member, stresses: “The news is so much part of our world now that you can’t protect children from it, you can’t remove it from their experience.