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Task-unrelated thought increases after consumption of COVID-19 and general news.

ABSTRACT: Task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs) are frequent distractions from our everyday tasks, which can reduce productivity and safety during task performance. This necessitates the examination of factors that modulate TUT occurrence in daily life. One factor that has previously been implicated as a source of TUT is personally salient concerns. External factors such as news media serve as cues for these concerns, potentially increasing TUT occurrence. However, this has not been thoroughly examined in everyday life settings. We thus utilized Ecological Momentary Assessment to survey participants throughout the day for ten days, on their TUTs and news consumption in two separate studies. Study 1 focused on the impact of news related to the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic, as a common and global concern. We found that TUT occurrence was significantly predicted by COVID-19 news consumption, such that TUT occurrence increased with COVID-19 news consumption. To extend these findings, we implemented Study 2 using similar methods, but focusing on the consumption of news media in general. TUT occurrence was predicted by general news consumption, with an increase in reports of TUT following consumption of news media in general. We thus extended the association found between TUT and COVID-19-related news in Study 1, to any news topic in Study 2. We speculate that the increase in TUTs was due to heightened salience of current concerns, cued by the news. These findings highlight the importance of considering when we choose to consume news media and the value of examining contextual factors when studying TUTs in daily life.

SUBMITTER: Hart CM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9309453 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:Despite growing concerns that children (8-13 years old) tend to avoid the news, the reasons why have received little research attention. Therefore, the current study aims to develop and test a model conceptualizing the relations between children's news consumption, news avoidance, emotional responses (negative emotions and anxiety-related behaviors), and parent and child mitigation strategies. The model was tested using data collected during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The current, preregistered, survey study was part of a longitudinal project and used data from the second wave. Data were collected in November/December 2020 among 510 children (M age = 10.40; 53.72% girls). Findings showed that children who consumed more news during the pandemic avoided pandemic news less often. Children who experienced more anxiety-related behaviors regarding pandemic news avoided pandemic news more often. The relation between news consumption and emotional responses was stronger for children who experienced restrictive parental mediation more often, indicating that this was not an effective parental mediation strategy for tempering their emotional responses. Children with higher levels of emotional responses used reactive coping strategies more often. However, this did not seem to be an effective strategy against pandemic news avoidance because none of the strategies had a negative relation with pandemic news avoidance. Distancing was even positively related to pandemic news avoidance. Although the current study was not able to fully unravel how news avoidance-related constructs relate to one another, we were able to get some important insights guiding future research. Specifically, it is of crucial importance to unravel the mechanisms that increase the chance of children's news avoidance and those that mitigate it, to build interventions to counteract news avoidance and to protect children from the negative emotional consequences by news consumption.

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Task-unrelated thought increases after consumption of COVID-19 and general news.

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