Samenvatting Om een actueel beeld te krijgen van angstreacties van kinderen op het NOS Jeugdjournaal is een survey afgenomen onder 892 kinderen (9-12 jaar). Bijna alle participanten (94.5%) kijken regelmatig naar het NOS Jeugdjournaal. Het merendeel van deze kinderen ervaart angstreacties door dit nieuws, maar gemiddeld worden ze slechts een klein beetje bang. Vooral meisjes en jongere kinderen lijken kwetsbaarder voor angstaanjagende nieuwsinhoud.

Hardly any research has been conducted regarding coping strategies that children can use in response to negative news, although they are frequently exposed to and emotionally affected by such news. Chat conversations with peers about the news could be a coping strategy for children in this regard. To investigate this, children (N = 307; 46.3% girls; Mage = 10.51; SDage = 0.98; range 8–13 years old) participated in a preregistered experiment in which their emotions were measured before and after exposure to a news video on a smartphone and also after a postexposure activity (i.e., chatting about the news as an experimental condition versus chatting about something else or solving a puzzle as control conditions). The results showed that the decrease in negative emotions and the increase in positive emotions were weaker for children who chatted about the news than for those in the control conditions. Thus, seeking social support in online chat conversations did not have the anticipated effect—and might even have an adverse effect.

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 (Mage = 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.

SUMMARY In March 2020 a lockdown was announced due to the Covid-19 outbreak. As a result, most employees were asked to work from home. Shortly after the lockdown, a questionnaire survey was conducted among 314 workers. This questionnaire was about happiness at work experienced before the outbreak of Covid-19 and during the (full or partial) lockdown. This provided information about the influence of Covid-19 and the associated working from home on employee happiness at work. This study examines the impact of the Covid-19 crisis and a number of other factors on people’s happiness at work. In short, it can be stated that people in the Netherlands rate their happiness at work as more than satisfactory. In the period of Covid-19, however, the average happiness at work rate decreased. Both personal and work-related factors influence happiness at work. Respondents’ mental health is a major predictor of happiness at work. Work-related factors that influence happiness at work are: autonomy, competence, relatedness and social support from the supervisor. Also, social environment influences happiness at work during the Covid-19 crisis. Employees without a partner appeared to be most vulnerable. This has implications for managers and Human Resource Managers within organizations in order to effectively facilitate these groups of employees.