What have we done to our children?

[Flossflower]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/sep/09/covid-lockdowns-prematurely-aged-girls-brains-more-than-boys-study-finds

I think we should never do this again even if it means killing off the oldies ( me included)!

Can't change yesterday but we can change now and the future - perhaps by spending more time away from home and visiting friends and family. How much of the brain change is caused by increased screen use because of COVID restrictions.
Perhaps the next pandemic will have different vulnerable groups eg mpox - certain groups have been vaccinated ie gay men, and smallpox vaccine which old people will have had offers some protection so the vulnerable could be children and their parents.

I am waiting for a trans one next on MN daily bingo

The numbers are extremely small. They don’t say how they got the MRI scans, why they were done on the children, and they can’t be sure of the reason. I’m not a regular guardian reader anymore but I don’t recall them being particularly anti lockdown.

Your dramatic headline isn’t really supported by these findings. And lockdown was very beneficial to a lot of children and families and has changed how they live their lives and access education.

I am very sorry that I have brought a familiar subject up again. It is just that it really really shocked me that we have done this to girls.

I’m not noticing any difference between boys and girls. Covid is becoming a memory and not impacting any part of their lives (I appreciate some children are struggling with long Covid).

Maybe we should have kept schools fully open? Ensuring every member of staff caught Covid repeatedly?

Theres already a case being bought against the government from teachers and nhs workers with long covid. Perhaps there should be more of these? What do you think?

How would making teachers, grandparents, parents and medical staff really really ill and killing more of them off help children?

If it ever happens again I do think we need to grit out teeth and do more outdoor meetings, it was dead outside in the jan and feb of the pandemic. I'd have a mass hand out of proper coats and gazebos.

It’s increasingly clear there have been far reaching negative consequences for the social development of our children.
However, there would also have been consequences if we had not locked down and it’s not clear they wouldn’t have been worse. Losing much loved grandparents in a horrible way wouldn’t have been without impact either.

I'd be interested to know the benefits to children from getting to spend more time with their parents after the shift to hybrid and home-working post-Covid.

Social media, excessive screen time and phone addiction is a far far bigger issue. Covid lockdowns may have compounded and accelerated some issues but the issues were there before covid.

It's easy now to say what we should have done. At the time information was changing every day, difficult decisions had to be made.

Hindsight is 2020 pardon the pun

Absolutely. And a lot of people throw their hands up and say they got their kids on screens to get through lockdown so now they can’t change it which is dangerously passive given what’s at stake. People are making choices and need to own them.

There is lots of anecdotal evidence that children, as a cohort, were effected (and each age a bit differently). Not that every child was affected, but just general trends.

Hindsight is indeed wonderful and we also have no idea what effects may have occurred if lockdown ls hadn't happened.

..and what's more that 5G did activate the chips in the vaccines just like they said.

Seriously next time we have a serious epidemic (maybe we'll get lucky and get bubonic plague) I'll be on social media encouraging everyone else to lick a stranger's hand.

We shouldn't let common sense get in the way of our right to let our families die horribly.

Many said this at the time.

The backlash to that was incredible, you could see it recorded on here. Perhaps it was fear created by the overall campaign so people didn't want to hear about the damage

Yeah I was dubious about this study and wanted to find a link to it, which the article didn’t seem to provide. I feel like newspapers generally write reports about neuroscience really badly.

I image affects like many of lockdowns will be uneven.

I'm not sure my teen girls were affected the same way and they had easier time than DN as Dsis had money issues, serious work demands no childcare for younger child and a relationship breakdown.

They also had two parents at home and siblings perhaps somewhat mitigating loneliness and isolation - we ate together every evening and lunch and spent evenings together much more than now. Some of DD friends were home alone a lot due to parents work and much more isolated or other's who had very difficult home lives and even in exam years very limited access to online ways of staying in touch.

Also on MN some say it was just a few months - DD2 it hit end of Y6 and here in our bit of Wales it was Y9 before there she has a "normal" school year again.

A close relationship with grandparents can be very beneficial to children’s development and well being.

If you ‘kill off’ the oldies you are also killing those with vulnerabilities including children going through cancer treatment etc You are also risking healthy working population getting long term health problems like long Covid.

If the correct planning had been in place before the pandemic and the government of the time had behaved correctly there would have been less lockdowns and shorter lockdowns and less harm to children’s wellbeing.

The whole thing just show the importance of contingency planning and not voting it people who act in a morally corrupt manner.

@Flossflower what about ill/disabled children who were protected by lockdown?

Do they go out with ‘the oldies’ too?

’protect (only the able bodied) children!’

Lockdowns were less of an issue than how badly they were managed - if action had been taken sooner at the start of each wave then lockdowns would likely have been shorter and much less disruptive for everyone.

I think its nonsense. Girls have always been mature compared to boys. The study was only done on 160 children and it coincided with lockdown. The other study that was done was 2018, there is not enough long term data and to many variables to make a connection.

How do you know that early access to social media etc isn't involved in making girls brains more mature?

It's scaremongering and the article even says they aren't even sure if it's even negative thing?

I would like to see how much of the changes are down to screen time rather than specifically Covid.

It hasn't taken the impact of covid infections on these kids, even though it's well documented that covid can cause brain changes?

OP why do you think only "oldies" would die if there is no lockdown during a Pandemic??

Just as in the last Pandemic lockdown saves countless lives. Without lockdown hospitals become overwhelmed and staff are sick so there isn't anyone to treat people with injuries and illnesses not related to the Pandemic - many of which will be children.

Also other Pandemics in the past have taken the young and fit, not the old, you're OK with that being allowed to run through the entire population are you? (Read up on Sweating Sickness in the 16th century)