Disruptions In Daily Routine During COVID-19 Lockdown Have Led To Behavioural Problems In Teens: Study (Image Credits: iStock)
Covid lockdowns, including school closures, cancelled sports activities, and stay-at-home orders, may have prematurely aged teen brains by as much as four years, according to researchers from the University of Washington. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, adds to growing evidence that disruptions to daily routines during the pandemic could have led to increased behavioural issues, eating disorders, anxiety, and depression in both adolescent boys and girls.
Researchers at the university's Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences (I-LABS) initially started a study in 2018 to observe how the brain structures of 160 teenagers from the Seattle area developed over time, using MRI scans. The participants, nearly equal in number of boys and girls, were between the ages of 9 and 19 at the beginning of the study. However, the onset of COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 disrupted follow-up brain scans until 2021, prompting researchers to shift focus to how the lockdowns may have impacted adolescent brain development.
Lead researcher Patricia Kuhl, co-director of I-LABS, explained that by analyzing the thickness of the cerebral cortex — the brain’s outer layer responsible for higher-level functions like reasoning and decision-making — they found significant changes. The brain scans revealed that teen boys had aged by an additional 1.4 years, while the brains of teenage girls showed accelerated ageing of 4.2 years during the lockdown period.
The cerebral cortex naturally thins with age, and chronic stress can also accelerate this process. The study found that over the three years between the first and second scans, the cortical thinning was much more pronounced than expected. "As we age, the thinning of the cortex is associated with slower processing time and less flexible thinking, all of which are common with ageing," Kuhl said. "All the teens showed accelerated ageing, but it was more pronounced in girls."
In teenage girls, the brain scans revealed widespread thinning across 30 regions of the brain, affecting both hemispheres and all lobes. In contrast, the thinning in boys was limited to two regions in the occipital lobe, which is associated with distance perception, face recognition, and memory. Kuhl suggested that the more pronounced effect in girls may be related to their greater reliance on social interactions for emotional support, as opposed to boys, who tend to focus more on physical activities like sports.
“When girls and women are stressed, there's a natural tendency to gather and talk about it, which releases oxytocin and other neurotransmitters that provide relief," said Dr Ellen Rome, head of adolescent medicine at Cleveland Clinic Children’s Hospital, who was not involved in the research. "The lack of social interaction during lockdowns may have had a more severe impact on girls than boys."
The study raises important questions about the long-term effects of these changes on young people who endured pandemic restrictions, often alone in their rooms, attending classes via Zoom and missing vital social connections. While the research doesn’t definitively prove that lockdowns caused brain changes, it suggests that the thinning of the cortex may be linked to increased anxiety, depression, and behavioural issues — conditions that were already on the rise before COVID-19.
These findings add to the understanding of how environmental stressors like the pandemic may have lasting impacts on adolescent brain development. Further research will be needed to determine whether the brain changes are temporary or could lead to long-term cognitive and emotional challenges for the generation of teens who lived through the Covid lockdowns.
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