Impact of COVID-19 on the Mental Health of Children & Youth

While the COVID-19 pandemic has brought sickness and death around the world, physical health is not the only part of human life that has been impacted. The mental toll of physical isolation has been overwhelming as the entire world has had to readjust to safety measures. No one has had to adjust more profoundly than the nation’s children, who have gone from attending school five days a week to spending each day learning via a laptop or tablet, without access to friends, extracurricular classes, hobbies, or a physical learning environment. The impact on children’s mental health has been well documented, with some studies reporting up to a 76% increase in difficulty concentrating among children and adolescents, 52% increase in irritability, and a 31% increase in loneliness. This dire crisis in children’s mental health can be traced back to several key factors that heavily influence mental health for children and youth; significantly reduced social interaction, increased screen time, sharply increased exhaustion and burnout in caregivers, and a compounding effect on the damage caused by preexisting adverse childhood experiences. 

Appropriate social activity during childhood and adolescence is critical for both healthy development and strong mental health. While kids are still able to socialize within their own household group, and children with access to internet-connected devices can communicate with friends and classmates digitally, this is definitely well below the appropriate amount of social interaction for a child or teen to be experiencing as part of typical development. This can have massive implications for a child’s mental health. Social isolation has a disproportionate impact on the mental health of children when compared with the impact it has on adults. In the long term, loneliness dramatically increases a child’s chance of developing depression, anxiety, and difficulty focusing. Some children may not spend any social time at all with anyone aside from their parents, and will be exiting the pandemic to discover that they find those outside of their own household group to be frightful or strange, without any social skills for navigating interactions with someone outside of their immediate family. This can massively shape a young child’s early social skills and leave them feeling anxiety and uncertainty with regards to large social gatherings for life. The ones most vulnerable to this social isolation are children at either end of the experience of childhood; infants and adolescents. This is when the two largest

“learning bursts” for social and emotional learning take place, and therefore when healthy social development is most critical. Infants, who in an ideal world would be spending their time learning by meeting new people, visiting new places, and learning to form healthy attachments, are deprived of all but the most basic of social interactions. Infants and toddlers are also incapable of independently using digital technology to communicate, and are without the added social structure of school, friends, and teachers. Notably, the elements of an adolescent’s social life that are the most critical for them to experience as a part of their social learning – taking turns, resolving conflicts, managing their independence – aren’t possible via screen-based socializing. Additionally, adolescents commonly spend their teen years practicing at “adult” tasks, such as driving, scheduling, shopping, or other common daily tasks that function as practice for the burden of adult responsibility, all of which have either been deemed unsafe or rendered moot by the pandemic. As Leah Campbell reported for Healthline in her article “How COVID-19 Could Affect Kids’ Long-Term Social Development,” “Early social development can take place mostly within the family, but… as children get older and more socially adept, their peer group becomes the more important hub of social development.” 

While screen time was commonly enjoyed abundantly by children and adolescents of all ages before the appearance of the coronavirus, the amount of time spent on computers, tablets, phones, and televisions in the past year has skyrocketed. In large part this is due to schools moving to a remote learning model that heavily relies on students communicating with teachers and classmates via the internet and completing most, if not all, classwork digitally as well. Another contributing factor to the increased amount of screen time is simply the need for entertainment, as without playgrounds, school activities, or friends to spend time with, children grow bored and restless and parents – often working from home and incapable of investing the time and energy required to keep kids happily occupied – turn to screen time as a solution. The result is that kids are spending a record amount of time in front of screens, which can be a huge detriment to their mental health and healthy development. Just one of the ways in which this can impede mental health is through constant exposure to blue light, especially in the evening and at night. Bright lights near bedtime can massively disrupt healthy sleep, leaving children and teens tired throughout the day and increasing risk for depression and anxiety, among other common health problems associated with a chronic lack of sleep. Increased screen time also reflects a lack of physical activity, which can reduce endorphins in the brain and further damage the sleep

cycle. However, the one bright side offered by the increased amount of screen time is that as mentioned previously, access to digital technology has been a huge relief for children and youth to continue social interaction with friends and family. Experts report that in many ways, the opportunity for additional social interaction during this time has considerably offset the negative mental health impacts that the increased screen time has created. For this reason, pediatric psychological experts have encouraged parents to continue allowing extended screen time, within a certain standard of moderation, to children and youth. However, they are quick to add that as soon as in-person social gatherings are once again safe, screen time should return to being a limited resource within the households of children and teens. As reported by Nagata, et. al. in their article in the journal Obesity, “Although excessive screen time may be associated with health risks, including poor sleep and high accumulated time spent sedentarily, given during laws and policies during COVID-19, rises in screen time may be inevitable and even beneficial for education and socialization. These increases in overall screen time may result from non-discretionary or discretionary activities that foster positive youth development or that are purely for entertainment.” 

For parents, the lockdowns and security measures have meant a complete loss of all familial support structures that previously existed. Children who were spending seven to twelve hours a day between school and afterschool activities have been rendered housebound, and the increased level of care needed from the parent has caused a significant amount a caregiver burnout, a phenomenon that occurs when parents or other caregivers are emotionally and physically exhausted from the constant toll of caregiving. This can include feeling emotionally distant, fed up, frustrated, and resistant to continue the current level of care being provided. In an article published by the journal Child Psychiatry & Human Development, Russell, et. al. write, “In order to meet the unprecedented and indeterminate demands of parenting during COVID-19, parents must actively plan new caregiving, work, and education routines, potentially compromising time to tend to their own emotional experience and self-care.” This parental exhaustion and depression can extend to the children of the household, as Russell, et. al. continue, “The stresses and strains of parenting during disasters may amplify caregiver burden and mental health symptoms, potentially compromising parenting behavior sufficiently to impact the parent-child relationship – a significant predictor of children’s outcomes during times of prolonged stress.” With the adult support children are used to receiving from teachers, coaches,

and other mentors gone, a much more significant portion of the child’s physical and mental needs are being met by their parents. But when parents aren’t capable of managing such a heavy workload, that insufficiency in care takes a serious toll on the mental and emotional well-being of the child. 

For children already experiencing adverse childhood experiences, such as homelessness, abuse, mental health struggles, special education needs, family illness, or food insecurity, covid has compounded the consequences of the struggles these children were already facing. Students who relied upon in-school lunches for regular nutritious meals have gone without their provided 

free lunches. Students who received speech therapy, occupational therapy, or other needed special intervention services at school have received reduced service, moved to a less effective remote model, or have gone without these special services altogether. Children experiencing domestic violence at home have been forced to stay at home with their abuser constantly for weeks on end, without respite from their toxic home environment. Children with existing mental health struggles have been cut off from their social support networks and structured daily routines. Children who can’t afford digital devices or internet access have gone without even digital access to their school or social networks. Children experiencing homelessness who may have relied upon the services at school, the public library, or a community center have been cut off from those desperately needed supports. This kind of chronic stress has serious negative impacts for children and adolescents and can result in a lifelong increased risk for depression, anxiety, attachment disorders, C-PTSD, and a wide array of other mental health conditions. While it’s not possible to yet know the extent to which covid has exacerbated the harm done by these adverse childhood experiences, it’s clear that many children have had their suffering magnified by the isolation and environment of the pandemic.As stated by Elaine Howley in her article “Children’s Mental Health Crisis Could Be a Next ‘Wave’ in the Pandemic,” “The deaths, illness, economic and housing instability, and loss of the daily school routine have been especially hard for many children, providing the destabilizing trigger for a wide range of ACEs to arise in kids everywhere… Society will likely be grappling with the after-effects for decades to come.” 

There is no doubt that everyone living through the covid pandemic has taken a toll on their mental health. Even adults have found enormous challenges in adapting to the rapid changes required to secure the country’s public health. However, it’s critical that the children and youth who have been made to bear such an enormous burden for the health of the public not be forgotten. Their mental health has suffered tremendously from the profound lack of social interaction, the dramatically increased screen time, parents experiencing high levels of caregiver burnout and distress, and the amplifying effects that covid has had on children already enduring trauma in their young life.

Works Cited