Acute stress trauma can result from exposure via media

Sharon Jayson | USA TODAY

Being glued to any kind of screen — not just television — in the wake of a traumatic event may hurt your mental health, according to a new analysis of stress symptoms and media consumption after the Boston Marathon bombings.

Six or more hours a day of exposure to media coverage in the week after the tragedy April 15 was linked to more acute stress than having been at or near the marathon, finds the study, online today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"While direct exposure, of course, had an impact, this media exposure was an even stronger predictor of acute stress than was direct exposure," says co-author Roxane Cohen Silver, a professor of psychology and social behavior at the University of California-Irvine.

"We're not talking about somebody sitting in front of the television," she says. "This is being repeatedly exposed throughout the day to a variety of sources of media."

Symptoms of acute stress (intrusive thoughts, feeling on edge, avoiding reminders of the event and feeling detached) increased with each additional hour of bombing-related exposure to media, including TV, social media, video, print or radio) on any device, including a smartphone.

Two to four weeks after the bombings, researchers surveyed online a nationally representative sample of 4,675 adults, including 846 Boston-area residents and 941 from New York City, to determine acute stress responses, the degree of direct exposure to the bombings, indirect exposure through media and prior exposure to other recent community-based traumas.

"Mass media may become a conduit that spreads negative consequences of community trauma beyond directly affected communities," the study says.

This research is similar to a study Silver conducted after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and the Iraq War, which found an increase in physical and psychological ailments up to three years later among those who had indirect exposure to the events. That work was based solely on television exposure.