Wednesday, September 30th, 2026

I’ve been thinking about how the news about everything that is going on in the world must be affecting our children. Not that I think things are actually worse than they have been in the past. There have always been terrible things going on in the world. But the constant stream of news is difficult to avoid. It is difficult to avoid for adults, who have a broader context to put situations in perspective. They remember when people thought times were bad before, and how they got better. But kids, when they hear the news, either from their parents or from social media, don’t yet have the context to know what to be concerned about and what to ignore.

This topic came to mind as I was talking with one of my friends the other day. We share the same perspective on a few topics, and he is specifically concerned about the environment. He mentioned that he couldn’t believe the current administration in the US decided to lower fuel efficiency standards. I have been pretty good at avoiding the news lately, but even I heard about this change. To me, it was just another in a long list of changes that are all about undoing the last administration’s goals. What stuck with me was that my friend mentioned that his daughter said she had a nightmare that the world was going to end. Which made me think, if you are, say, ten years old, and all you hear about are the bad things going on in the world, it would be odd not to think that the world was going to end.

The news is famous for pushing negative stories. For highlighting what is wrong, and very rarely being able to provide the long view. “If it bleeds, it leads,” as they say. Climate change, wars, homelessness, AI killer robots, that’s just the short list. There is a reason horror movies are popular again: people want to feel that their world isn’t as bad as the characters’ in the latest slasher movie. Backrooms and Obsession were both massive hits this summer with younger audiences. Basically the only movies they went to see. There are several reasons for that, but the fact that they are both horror movies should not be lost.

I’m not sure there is much to assure young people that things will be fine when all the signals say otherwise. It may just be a required rite of passage that is not often discussed.