Children today have more reasons to be stressed than young people did a generation or two ago, according to executives on the forefront of kids TV programming. Climate change, pandemics, racial reckoning, school violence and the onslaught of confusing social media messaging are raising anxiety among young viewers.
However, these executives say the answer is not to protect kids from knotty problems, but to use entertainment to educate, demystify and give children a chance to become empowered by exposure to problem-solving from a safe distance.
Halle Stanford, president of TV for the Jim Henson Company, said the new landscape for kids was top of mind as the company worked on the reboot of the nearly 40-year-old series “Fraggle Rock,” now reinvented as “Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock” on Apple TV+.