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Article Excerpt
With more than a century of research, fears are well documented. Hall (1897) reported such fears as thunderstorms, darkness, death, animals, disease, and ghosts. Nearly 40 years later, Jersild and Holmes (1935b) classified fears as follows: (a) concrete events (e.g., animals, strange people), (b) losses (e.g., failure, health, death), and (c) imaginative fears (e.g., supernatural, darkness, being alone, movies, radio programs). When Hall's and Jersild and Holmes's (1935b) fear research were compared, technological advances (i.e., movies and radio) appeared to influence the content changes that were found. Nevertheless, distinct fear patterns were common (e.g., animals, darkness, death, supernatural) across these two studies and throughout the early 20th century.
Although technological advances prompted new fears in Jersild and Holmes's (1935b) research, the AIDS epidemic caused the fear of AIDS to soar among youth in the 1990s (Burnham, 1995; Gullone, 2000). Similarly, 9/11 instigated the fear of terrorist attacks in 2001 among children and adolescents in the United States (Burnham, 2007). Thus, with fear studies across 3 centuries (19th through the 21st) and data to show that fears can change based on present events, issues, and concerns (e.g., war, hurricanes, terrorist attacks, school shootings), it is imperative that researchers continue to study the fears of children and adolescents. With this in mind, the current study had three aims: (a) to examine contemporary fears of youth (i.e., most common fears) in Grades 2-12, (b) to determine whether a current fear assessment needs to be modified for the 21st century, and (c) to offer challenges for school counselors in the 21st century.
* What Are the Contemporary Fears of the 21st Century?
There are no exhaustive lists of the contemporary fears of today's children, although researchers have attempted to examine contemporary fears through the years (Burnham, 1995, 2005; Muris, Merckelbach, & Collaris, 1997; Muris, Merckelbach, Meesters, & van Lier, 1997; Muris et al., 2002; Owen, 1998; Shore & Rapport, 1998). Adler (1994) concluded that children fear crime, racial tension, poverty, divorce, pollution, overpopulation, world hunger, guns, shootings, gangs, dying, kidnapping, and being home alone. Owen added street drugs, gangs, gunshots, being burned, and drive-by shootings, whereas Gullone and King (1992) confirmed that AIDS was a contemporary fear.
* Causes of Contemporary Fears
On the basis of the literature, the causes of contemporary fears of youth vary; however, many fears have emerged across time because of children's and adolescents' exposure to situations on a frequent basis. The common situations often include (a) global events (e.g., trauma, disasters, war, diseases), (b) television/media exposure, and (c) societal changes.
Global Events
Global events, crises, diseases, and disasters have prompted researchers to study contemporary fears of children and adolescents. For instance, Pratt (1945) looked at the effects of World War II on children. As world powers made nuclear war seemingly imminent in the 20th century, children's concerns about nuclear war were analyzed (Buban, McConnell, & Duncan, 1988; Slee & Cross, 1989; Wallinga, Boyd, Skeen, & Paguio, 1991). After the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle, Terr et al. (1999) studied posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms, whereas the AIDS epidemic brought attention to AIDS as a fear for children (Gullone, 2000). Similarly, the 9/11 terrorist attacks triggered an influx of studies addressing anxieties and concerns of youth (Pine & Cohen, 2002; Schlenger et al., 2002; Schuster et al., 2001; Squires, 2002; Stuber et al., 2002).
Television and Media Exposure
Media exposure, primarily television, has been another cause of fear among children for decades. In fact, prior to the popularity of television, Jersild and Holmes (1935a) reported fears of "characters met in stories, motion pictures, and radio programs" (p. 155). During the past 30 years, mass media has emerged more frequently as a factor in children's fears (Croake & Knox, 1973; Ferrari, 1986; Fremont, Pataki, & Beresin, 2005; King & Gullone, 1990; Larson, 2003; Moracco & Camilleri, 1983). From such studies, the understanding of how media affects children has become more apparent (i.e., developmental stage plays a role in how well children can interpret correctly what they view, younger children are more vulnerable and upset by what they view [Fremont et al., 2005]).
Societal Changes
Societal changes are a third cause of the contemporary fears of children. Adler (1994) illustrated the impact societal changes have on children. The categories offered by Adler included changes in family dynamics (e.g., increases in single-parent homes, number of working mothers, more juvenile offenders from single-parent homes) and outside influences (e.g., watching television violence, viewing real violence, increases in child abuse, increases in sexual activity at earlier ages, and violent crime). On the basis of the literature, other issues are also emerging at this time. A few examples include cyber-bullying (Li, 2007), bullying and teasing (Weinhold, 2007), school violence (National Association of School Psychologists [NASP; n.d.-b]; Weinhold, 2007), drug abuse (National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2005), marked growth of English as a second language populations (Clemente & Collison, 2000; McCall-Perez, 2000), and obesity among youth (Daniels et al., 2005). Researchers have surmised that as the social and political aspects of a particular time change, so do the fears of children (Burnham, 2005; Gullone & King, 1992). This conclusion shows the need to define and measure contemporary fears of youth in the 21st century.
* Measuring Fears of Today's Youth
Global events, traumas, war, natural and human-made disasters, and diseases influence the emotional balance of youth (Burnham, 2007; Pfefferbaum et al., 1999; Pine & Cohen, 2002; Squires, 2002; Terr et al., 1999). Because the last few years in the United States have been more pernicious than ever (e.g., 9/11, Iraq War, plane crashes, obesity increases among youth, number of teenage pregnancies, major illnesses, death, drive-by shootings, bullying, shootings at school, violence near home...
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