New research suggests that the impact of horror movies or scary television shows on children's wellbeing has been overstated.

Researchers at the University of Sussex found that only a small amount of children can have extreme reactions to a scary program or film. There was little sign of increased anxiety, fear, sadness or sleep problems in children.

"Across studies, scary TV had an impact on children's wellbeing but it was fairly small on average, suggesting that most children are not affected very much at all," researcher and professor Andy Field said in a statement.

For the study, researchers reviewed all research into the topic carried out over the past 25 years. Based on the findings, the concluded that, in general, children are fairly resilient to the scary things they might see on television.

Meanwhile, fear and anxiety among children and teenagers is on the rise - children in the 1980s reported higher levels of anxiety than psychiatric patients in the 1950s, and these increases have continued to the present day. However, Field said it is too simplistic to place all the blame for this rise on increased exposure to media.

"We need to do more research into why particular children can be severely affected by particular content on TV. What is it about the media or about those individuals that causes this reaction? There is good reason to believe, for example, that already anxious and/or introverted children might be less resilient to scary content," Field said. "Once we know why certain children are more affected by what they watch than others, we can give more specific and useful advice to parents, rather than assuming that all scary TV is bad for all children, which this analysis shows is not the case."

Field said TV guidelines focus on violent content at the expense of non-violent but frightening content -- such as worrying news reports or content depicting psychological stress or phobias.

The findings, which are detailed in the journal Human Communication Research, "have implications for policy-makers because TV guidelines focus on violence but, for some children, scariness will matter and TV can be scary without being violent," he added.