Research shows how the pandemic has affected teenage boys and girls differently

Being a teenager during the early part of the COVID pandemic meant experiencing a lot of milestones — the first day of high school, birthdays, graduations — behind a computer screen.

Pandemic isolation has had a clear effect on young people. But a recent study from the University of Washington found that teenage girls suffered more from lockdown than teenage boys, with girls’ brains aging more than three times faster.

Researchers say it’s not entirely clear what that might mean in the long term for people who were teens at the start of the pandemic. But in the near future, it could make teenage girls more susceptible to anxiety and depression.

Neva Corrigan, lead researcher on the study, said the research underscores the need for more support for mental health.

“You don’t necessarily have to wait until someone develops a full-blown depressive episode or anxiety attack,” Corrigan said. “You can help prevent that by providing mental health support in the form of counseling, to help kids deal with their feelings.”

In 2018, researchers at the UW’s Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences studied the brain scans of 160 people ages 9 to 17, hoping to see changes in their brains over a two-year period. When the pandemic hit, they had to wait an extra year to bring their subjects back.

About 130 of them came back for the second scan. The researchers used data from about 110 people from the original group to create a model, projecting what the expected brain development would look like. They used data from about 50 other students in that group to see how their brains had actually changed over those three years.

What they found surprised them. Between 2018 and 2021, the teenage girls in the study experienced more thinning of their frontal cortex, which is indicative of brain aging. They found that the brains of teenage girls were 4.2 years older than predicted, while the brains of teenage boys were 1.2 years older than expected.

According to Corrigan, the brain areas that showed the greatest cortical thinning were the part of the brain associated with social interactions.

“We know that girls in their teens use their social network a lot to manage emotions and stressors,” Corrigan said. “During COVID, they lost that emotional support, and men may not be using that as much.”

According to Corrigan, cortical thinning is a normal part of aging: As people age, the brain begins to prune synapses, or the connections between nerve cells, to streamline and make functioning more efficient.

But it also reduces the brain’s plasticity, or its ability to change. That reduction in connections can increase the risk of depression and anxiety, which teenage girls already have higher rates of than their male peers.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the pandemic has had an overall negative impact on the mental well-being of children and teens. They found that emergency department visits for children increased after the pandemic began for things like self-harm and psychological issues.

The center reported that from 2020 to 2022, more children went to the emergency room annually for certain injuries, chronic diseases and behavioral problems than in 2019. The center also reported that teenage girls may have fared the worst during the pandemic, with emergency room visits for things like eating disorders and tic disorders tripling nationwide for teenage girls during the pandemic.

A recent New York Times article highlighted some of the study’s limitations, quoting a brain researcher at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles who said the study didn’t track changes in specific brains because it used different subjects to model “normal” development than to measure the impact of the pandemic.

Corrigan also acknowledged that while the study showed changes during this time, researchers couldn’t pinpoint the exact aspects of the lockdown that caused those changes. Researchers assumed it was the stress, she said, based on previous research on how chronic stress affects the brain.

People who work regularly with teenagers say they have felt the effects of the COVID lockdown as students return to school in person.

Tammy Huson, a counselor at Catharine Blaine K-8 School, said she’s noticed an increase in anxiety among teenage girls. Many have become more withdrawn and have experienced a decline in self-confidence or self-reliance, she said. Boys, meanwhile, she said, have become less verbal in expressing their feelings. Among college populations, she’s seen social delays, with some students feeling more anxious about venturing outside their own space.

She attributed those changes to fears that had arisen during the pandemic, not only among children but also among parents.

Adults generally have the ability to moderate their emotions and understand that they won’t always feel certain fear or anxiety, but most children haven’t developed that ability, Huson said.

The uncertainty brought on by the pandemic may have made it harder for parents to respond to their children’s fears, she added.

“Now they’re overwhelmed and overwhelmed, worried about the safety of their own children or their elderly parents,” Huson said. “So they’re not mitigating their children’s fears because they’re overwhelmed by their own fears.

Peter Faustino, president of the National Association of School Psychologists, said that in addition to building relationships with each other, teens should also build connections with supportive adults. They should also try to develop healthy routines, such as regular exercise and getting enough sleep. This can promote brain development and help teens recover from the trauma of the pandemic.

He also urged parents to consult teachers and school counselors if they notice their teens struggling. Those changes may be visible on a brain scan, he said, but they may not be as obvious in a student’s daily life.

“Teachers and school psychologists who work in such spaces and deal with hundreds of children every day can give very targeted, tailored advice on what to look for and what could be a problem,” Faustino said.

Corrigan said researchers need to do further research to determine whether teens’ brains continue to age faster after the pandemic, or whether the brain slows the aging process to compensate.

In the meantime, she said, parents and other adults should offer as much emotional support as possible. They should listen to their teens and talk to them about how to cope with anxious or depressed thoughts. They should also watch for signs that they are struggling and encourage them to connect socially.

“This study highlights the importance of social interaction for teens,” Corrigan said. “Adults should encourage and help teens make these connections. I know it may not be fun for parents when their kids spend all their time with their friends, but those interactions are so important to their teens’ development.”

Huson also encouraged parents and others who work with adolescents not to worry so much about labeling their children with specific disorders and instead to simply help them navigate their challenges.

“We want to help kids re-coach and say, ‘Is this thought helpful?'” Huson said. “Is there another way I can look at this? How can I replace that thought with something else or move on to something else?”

Adults can model this behavior for their teens by also taking care of their own mental health, Huson says.

“When they get anxious, one of the best things an adult can do is pause and reset,” she said. “If they can model that for the kids, kids can see that they can acknowledge that anxiety, but not live in it.”

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