Hadhazy, A. (2020, September 22). COVID-19’s mental toll on teens. Stanford News.
Hadhazy (2020) discusses the psychological impact of COVID-19 on school-going teenagers. Crucially, the article focuses on atypical adolescents who may have become pubescent earlier than their peers. Such atypical teenagers are often characterized by markers detectable in brain scans of the Executive Control Network (ECN). The research piece details how this particular subset of teenagers responded to the pandemic from a mental health perspective, based on their prior socialization habits. Additionally, the research lays the groundwork for training ECNs to respond to stressful events among adolescents.
Hoofman, J., & Secord, E. (2021). The effect of COVID-19 on education. Pediatric Clinics of North America, 68(5).
From an academic perspective, Hoofman and Secord (2021) outline the changes the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to education. Teenagers have been forced to adapt to virtual learning and decreased socialization following school closures. The study contributes to the project by examining how the pandemic has impacted various categories of school-going adolescents, including those in special education and high school. It also details the decline in academic performance and the discovery that teenagers relied on schools for much more than just academic instruction.
Jones, E. A. K., Mitra, A. K., & Bhuiyan, A. R. (2021). Impact of COVID-19 on mental health in adolescents: A systematic review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(5), 2470.
Jones et al. (2021) give a meta-analysis of how COVID-19 has created a mental health crisis in children. Their secondary study draws on 16 primary quantitative studies to provide a detailed summary of the effects of the pandemic on mental health. The researchers report on the effect of COVID-19 on mental health and specifically depression. The article also discusses the coping mechanisms that teenagers use, such as drugs, as well as the role of psycho-social support in mitigating the adverse mental health effects of the pandemic.
Kuhfeld, M., Soland, J., Tarasawa, B., Johnson, A., Ruzek, E., & Lewis, K. (2020, December 3). How is COVID-19 affecting student learning? Brookings Institution.
Kuhfield et al. (2020) focus on the effect of school closures on teenagers’ academic outcomes. Crucially, the research compares pre- and post-pandemic academic performance across a sample of 8,000 schools in the USA. The results of this comparison are statistically analyzed and yield meaningful inferences. The article highlights the significant academic drawbacks of school closures, including the loss of academic content, which negatively impacts their performance in examinations. Additionally, the article predicts some long-term effects the pandemic will have on learners.
Ma, L., Mazidi, M., Li, K., Li, Y., Chen, S., Kirwan, R., Zhou, H., Yan, N., Rahman, A., Wang, W., & Wang, Y. (2021). Prevalence of mental health problems among children and adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Affective Disorders, 293.
Ma et al. (2021) delve into the particular manifestations of poor mental health observed in teenagers following the COVID-19 pandemic. The article is a meta-analysis of 23 primary studies from which it details the incidence of insomnia, depression, Post-traumatic stress disorder, and anxiety in teenagers. Its inclusion in this project is merited, as the article compares the psychological effects of the pandemic on boys and girls. The researchers highlight that girls were more depressed than boys overall.
Panagouli, E., Stavridou, A., Savvidi, C., Kourti, A., Psaltopoulou, T., Sergentanis, T. N., & Tsitsika, A. (2021). School performance among children and adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review. Children, 8(12), 1134.
Panagouli et al. (2021) provide a meta-analysis of primary research that details the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on adolescents’ academic outcomes. In particular, the article focuses on the impact of online learning on teenagers’ comprehension and retention of academic concepts. Notably, the article discusses online learning and the learning losses it may cause for teenagers who are not well-suited to out-of-classroom instruction. Their review of existing literature concludes that while some learners benefited from online learning, an overwhelming majority struggled, particularly in math and reading.
Riiser, K., Helseth, S., Haraldstad, K., Torbjørnsen, A., & Richardsen, K. R. (2020). Adolescents’ health literacy, health protective measures, and health-related quality of life during the COVID-19 pandemic. PLOS ONE, 15(8), e0238161.
From a social perspective, Riiser et al. (2020) highlight the impact of COVID-19 on teenagers’ socialization. In particular, the article focuses on the impact of health literacy on awareness of the spread of SARS-CoV-2. The researchers conducted a cross-sectional study involving approximately 2200 adolescents to assess their interaction with COVID-19 awareness messaging and its impact on their health-related quality of life (HRQoL). The article concludes that exposure to health information was inversely associated with HRQoL, and that some teenagers experienced significantly diminished social lives in the immediate wake of the pandemic.