The Pandemic’s Impact on Adolescent Mental Health and how to Overcome it

If you are a middle school, high school or college student - let’s have a chat.

March, 2020. The COVID pandemic strikes. The entire world is on high alert, restaurants and bars were shut down and schools forced to move online. Country after country, state after state, new policies were placed putting countries into lockdown, forcing people into social isolation. Of course, no one denies the importance or urgency of these implementations to stop the spread of the virus. However, it would also be irresponsible to deny that these new protocols do have some unintentional consequences, especially in relation to people’s emotional well-being.

It might be confusing to hear, but I believe adolescents are one of the populations that will feel the impact of the pandemic most drastically, especially in the long term, but not in the way you might think. We, adolescents, are mostly safe from the physical hazards of the virus as we tend to only experience minor symptoms and have quick recoveries. The impact on us is felt in other ways: our mental health. Adolescents' emotional well-being has suffered significantly since the start of the pandemic as our social networks were cut off during such a critical stage of development.

Talking science for a second; research conducted since the start of the pandemic monitored individual’s emotional response to social isolation protocol: One particular study, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Psychiatry, showed that social isolation (and distancing) have led to an increased risk of depression and anxiety among high school and college students (with correlations coefficients p.50, indicating strong correlations) (Loades, Chatburn, Higson-Sweeney, Reynolds, Shafran, Brigden, Linney, McManus, Borwick & Crawley, 2020). This same study also shows that the duration of loneliness is more strongly correlated to depression in comparison to the intensity of loneliness; meaning it’s more damaging to be alone for long periods of time then it is to be completely alone with no communication but for a short period of time.

Adolescence is a period of significant social development - it’s when we learn to read other people’s emotions, understand their point of views, we build relationships that can last a lifetime and it all contributes to the development of our own identity (Steinberg, 2020). However, for that we need frequent and quality interaction with peers, something we haven’t been able to do since schools closed down. Thus, this raises concerns about what the pandemic and isolation could be doing to the social development of adolescents and how that can impact their social well-being in the long term.

Now- how can we overcome this? Of course it would be irresponsible of me to say that adolescents should prioritize social interactions over safety during the pandemic, however there are ways to maintain social relationships in a safe manner.

The most important way being to spend time with family. During adolescence, we tend to distance ourselves from our parents as we search for autonomy and develop our identity. This distancing is perfectly normal and beneficial when we have our peers around us to learn and build relationships with (Steinberg, 2020). With the pandemic, however, we don’t have our peers regularly around us. This is therefore a perfect opportunity to reconnect to our parents and learn from them. Another study conducted on the Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science demonstrated how adolescents experienced less anxiety and depression and were better equipped to handle the stress of the pandemic when they maintained a close and consistent relationship with their parents (Ellis, Dumas & Forbes, 2020).

Another form to maintain connections during the pandemic is through social media. No, I’m not saying that it’s healthy for you to spend hours alone in your room scrolling through TikTok. However, social media when used in moderation (less than 30 minutes a day) and appropriately (meaning no photoshop or obsessive “likes” checking; which can lead to excessive comparison and increased body dissatisfaction) can be beneficial as it provides an alternative social network you can be exposed to until schools/college returns to in-person. Studies have demonstrated how when used appropriately, social media can have significant positive effects on adolescent development as it increases social capital by providing individuals with a network of relationships to whose can live or work in different societies, thus exposing individuals to various different points of views which can assist their own identity exploration.

So, use this as your call to action! Social isolation does not mean you need to disconnect from the world and watch Netflix on your phone all the time. Get up and go talk to your parents and grandparents, you’d be surprised how much you can learn from them. Keep in constant touch with your friends, remembering that it’s about frequency and not intensity. Reach out to them, even if it’s just to send a meme or a TikTok, Facetime them every night, text them, Snapchat them; whatever platform you have available, use them!

For further questions/comments/concerns, feel free to reach out!

Luah Pagliuso, luahpagliuso@gwu.edu

Bibliography

Best P, Manktelow R, Taylor B. Online communication, social media and adolescent well-being: a systematic narrative review. Child Youth Serv Rev. 2014;41:27–36

Ellis, W. E., Dumas, T. M., & Forbes, L. M. (2020). Physically isolated but socially connected: Psychological adjustment and stress among adolescents during the initial COVID-19 crisis. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science / Revue Canadienne Des Sciences Du Comportement, 52(3), 177-187. doi:10.1037/cbs0000215

Loades, M. E., Chatburn, E., Higson-Sweeney, N., Reynolds, S., Shafran, R., Brigden, A., . . . Crawley, E. (2020). Rapid systematic review: The impact of social isolation and loneliness on the mental health of children and adolescents in the context of covid-19. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 59(11). doi:10.1016/j.jaac.2020.05.009

Steinberg, L. (2020). Adolescence, 12th edition. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN10: 1260058891; ISBN13: 9781260058895.