Using telephone interviews with a random sample of Dutch children between the ages of 7 and 12 years, the authors investigated (a) the prevalence of television-induced fright, (b) whether the fear-inducing capacity of different types of television content (interpersonal violence, fantasy characters, war and suffering, and fires and accidents) is associated with the child's age and gender, and (c) how boys and girls in different age groups cope with their television-induced fears. Thirty-one percent of the children reported having been frightened by television during the preceding year. Both children's television-induced fears and their coping strategies to reduce such fears varied by age and gender.
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