As the presidential election intensified over the past year, Cronkite associate professor Asheley Landrum partnered with CNN to explore the impact of political polarization on kids.
The result: a special segment on Anderson Cooper 360 called Kids On Politics, aired Sept. 25. It includes highlights from more than 40 hours of interviews conducted by Landrum and filmed by CNN. Landrum’s interviews revealed how the children felt about political candidates and political differences.
“The kids’ responses to our questions were extremely candid and precocious,” said Landrum. “They were also really funny, not just what they said, but how they said it.”
The study was designed by Landrum, who examines media psychology, and Stanford political science professor Shanto Iyengar. It included interviews with more than 80 fourth graders across Arizona, New Jersey and Texas, and responses from kids as young as 10 reflected deep political polarization.
Other findings included:
- Evidence of stronger attitudes from kids in Democrat-leaning New Jersey than in Republican-leaning Texas. The Democrat-leaning children were more likely to say they really liked Harris and really disliked Trump.
- Republican-leaning children were more likely to say they liked Trump and were neutral to positive about Harris.
- More than 90% of boys said Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris would have an impact in the election. Less than two-thirds of girls agreed.
- The majority of the kids interviewed thought the country was ready for a woman to be president.
“Although many kids attributed their thoughts to their parents, the role of the news media—and media in general—was the ‘elephant in the room,’” said Landrum.
Interviews revealed that kids often discussed politics with family members during or after watching the news together, and in some cases kids overheard the news and the reactions of their families even when their families assumed they were not paying attention.
The sources of news varied by location: kids in red states were more likely to have smartphones and reported getting news not just from their parents but also from platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Google. In contrast, kids in blue states were less likely to have smartphones and more likely to use tablets, relying primarily on their parents and TV for information about news and politics. More red-state kids shared misinformative claims than blue-state kids.
The first round of interviews was conducted in May and June, before the first presidential debate. CNN followed up this month to see how Vice President Harris’s candidacy changed their views.