Study shows how pandemic affected teen boys and girls differently

Being a teen during the first part of the COVID pandemic meant experiencing many milestones—the first day of high school, birthdays, graduation—from behind a computer screen.

Pandemic isolation had a marked effect on young people. But a recent University of Washington study found teen girls were more adversely affected by the lockdown than teen boys, with girls’ brains aging more than three times as much.

Researchers say it’s not entirely clear what that could mean long-term for people who were teens during the early part of the pandemic. But in the immediate future, it could make teen girls more susceptible to anxiety and depression.

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

“You don’t necessarily need to wait until a person 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 UW’s Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences studied the brain scans of 160 people ages 9 to 17 with the intention of looking at 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 the data of about 110 people from the original group to create a model, projecting what expected brain development would look like. They used the data from about 50 other students in that group to look at how their brains had actually changed in those three years.

What they found surprised them. Between 2018 and 2021, the teen girls in the study experienced more thinning of their frontal cortices—indicating aging in the brain. They found teen girls’ brains aged 4.2 years beyond the predicted rate, whereas teen boys’ brains aged 1.2 years more than expected.

The areas where girls’ brains showed the most cortical thinning was in the part of the brain associated with social interactions, Corrigan said.

“We know that during the teen years, girls use their social network a lot to help deal with emotions and stressors,” Corrigan said. “During COVID, they lost that emotional support avenue, and males may not use that as much.”

Corrigan said cortical thinning is a normal part of aging—as people get older, the brain begins pruning its synapses, or the connections between nerve cells, in order to streamline and make functioning more efficient.

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

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the pandemic had an overall negative effect on the mental well-being of children and teens, finding the number of visits to pediatric emergency departments increased for things like self-harm and psychological concerns after the pandemic began.

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

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

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

Those who work with teens regularly say they’ve seen the impacts of the COVID lockdown as students have returned to school in person.

Tammy Huson, a counselor at Catharine Blaine K-8 School, said she has noticed an increase in anxiety among adolescent girls. Many have been more withdrawn and experienced a drop in confidence or self-efficacy, she said. Boys, meanwhile, she said, have become less verbal in expressing their feelings. Across student populations, she’s observed social delays, with some students feeling more apprehensive about going outside their own space.

She attributed those changes to fears developed during the pandemic, not just among kids, but among parents.

While adults typically have the ability to moderate their emotions and understand they won’t always feel a certain fear or anxiety, most children haven’t yet developed that ability, Huson said.

The uncertainty of the pandemic might have made it more difficult for parents to respond to their children’s fears, she added.

“Now they’re flooded and inundated, worried about the safety of their own children or their elderly parents,” Huson said. “So they’re not moderating their children’s fears because they’re flooded in their own fears.

Peter Faustino, the president of the National Association of School Psychologists, said that in addition to fostering relationships with each other, teens should build connections with supportive adults and try to form healthy routines, such as exercising regularly and getting enough sleep, which can help the brain develop and help teens bounce back from the trauma of the pandemic.

He also urged parents to consult with teachers and school counselors if they notice their teens are struggling. Those changes might show up on a brain scan, he said, but they may not be as evident in a student’s everyday life.

“Teachers, school psychologists who are living in those spaces and interacting with hundreds of kids a day, they can give a lot of really tailored, targeted advice about what to look for and what might be a concern,” Faustino said.

Corrigan said researchers need to do further study to find out whether teenagers’ brains will continue to age at a faster rate after the pandemic, or whether the brain might slow down its aging process to compensate.

In the meantime, she said, parents and other adults should offer as much emotional support as they can—listening to their teens and talking to them about how to cope with anxious or depressive thoughts, keeping an eye on them for signs they might be struggling and encouraging them to socialize.

“This study highlights the importance of social interaction for teenagers,” Corrigan said. “Adults should be fostering and helping teens make these connections. I know it might not be fun for parents when their kids are spending all their time with their friends, but those interactions are very critical to their teens’ development.”

Huson also encouraged parents and others who work with adolescents not to worry so much about labeling them for specific disorders, and instead just trying to help them work through their challenges.

“We want to help re-coach kids into saying, ‘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 onto something else?”

Adults can help model all those behaviors for their teens by taking care of their own mental health too, said Huson.

“When they’re getting 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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