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)!

My DD enjoyed the lockdown just fine, her class were the most childish P7s the school had ever had when they went back too so I call a crock of shit there.

There is literally no evidence that lockdown did any good at all, anywhere.

Slowing down the spread, which allowed services to cope with demand for care, beds, treatment?

Is that not true?

It's always tempting to assume we know who life would have gone if we hadn't done x, y, z. But the reality is that no one knows.

No one really knows if it would have been better for children or worse without lockdowns. Maybe it would have been better because their social development would have been more complete. Maybe it would have led to a genuine overwhelming of the NHS leading to many many more deaths, leaving many childhoods marred by grief and loss.

As people have pointed out, many generations have something. I could probably have done without growing up watching multiple friends and family members lose their homes in the 80s, leading to a lifelong fear of it. Before me, my parents could probably have done without the Cold War and widespread fear of nuclear winters. Before them, the war. Before them, the other war.

All we can do is take the time given to us and make the best of it.

True for DD2 and to lesser extent other two and DH students as well.

So I assume they meant how old brain structures looked - and it's unclear what if anything that means rather than behavior.

I will just about concede that a first lockdown was needed, in the face of the unknown. However, so many other things were a massive mistake, including:

• The total stifling of any debate, in government, on social media, and on Mumsnet. Nobody was allowed to talk about the blatant harms of prolonged lockdown: anybody who tried was met with "shut up, and stop murdering grannies". This added fuel to the fire of "it's a hoax".
• The relentless campaign of fear. It made people turn on each other: again, Mumsnet demonstrated this beautifully. It also made it politically impossible to ease restrictions: the public were so frightened, that many of them simply couldn't handle the idea of any return to how things were before. It also meant that many of us will simply never trust any government or mainstream media again. I'm still waiting for a scandal to break that the "crying nurses" were actors.
• The drip-drip boiling frog methods of communication from the government, and constantly moving the goalposts. "Twelve weeks of lockdown will send the virus packing" became "new normal", then "normalish by Christmas", "significant normality by Easter", "just until the over 60s are vaccinated", "just until the over 50s are vaccinated", "just until everybody is vaccinated". Again, doing all this screams "we have something to hide".
• Crowd-pleasing Boris pledging to do "whatever it takes" to beat the virus. Again, this made it politically impossible to end restrictions, until the "miracle" of vaccination came along; and in their desperation, the government brought the country dangerously close to making it compulsory, on pain of being excluded from society. This fed the idea (which I don't agree with) that lockdowns were planned (years in advance) to create compulsory vaccination.
• And obviously, Partygate; although I am entertaining the possible-but-unlikely idea that it was a deliberate ploy to make the public so angry, that they would never want a lockdown again. The government knew that they were toast by then, and with their reckless spending, they would have thought nothing of bribing Boris with a few million to be a sacrificial lamb, and to take all the blame for it. The timing of Partygate seemed very convenient, somehow: one revelation after another, drip drip. I anticipated that some MPs would get caught out and unseated by spending Christmas 2020 with their extended families; I didn't expect something as blatant as the Downing Street parties.

What I think the government should have done was, after the first lockdown, was to throw their hands up, and say "we must end lockdowns and restrictions, as they are clearly doing much more harm than good, and they will never eradicate the virus; and we are sincerely sorry about the destruction we have caused so far to your businesses, and to the mental health of your children". Even though he probably thought this privately, his handlers would never have allowed it.

It's not at all condescending and it is completely fair to blame some parents. Ineffectual is the nicest thing i could say about them. Sorry but this is the real world and not all parents are trying their best.

I grew up with ineffectual parents. And if I had to live with them during lockdown I probably wouldn't have made it out of the other side. Children are living in situations far worse than you can imagine if you think that everyone is trying. I think it's something like half a million children in the UK are suffering some type of abuse at home. Neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse... Now imagine living it through covid with no respite. I practically lived at one of my friends homes during my older teenage years.

I agree 100%

Wherever we go to eat children are always on a screen. Parents with a child on buggy the same. People drive and read messages at the same time and then horn at other cars which "suddenly appeared". When no, the car had started the maneuver 20 seconds ago but you were busy on your phone so stop screaming and yelling and nobody wants to hear your horn for 10 seconds!!!

I’ll wait for peer review and other research.

“showed signs of” aging, is not the same as “shows [actual] aging”

There is no detail about how many “showed signs” if any didn’t “show signs“ etc etc

Typical “news” interpretation of a study failing to give any real information.

Thank you.

I think that one reason that lots of people (including myself) are "blaming everything on lockdown" is because we were not allowed to point out that this would happen while it was happening, because it was "against the narrative".

We feel that we are saying it while we can, and because some of us fear that now that the massive, monstrous precedent of lockdown has been set, that it might be used again when the public have forgotten Partygate, and we feel a need to keep reminding everybody about the harms of lockdown, because we suspect that they may be downplayed or hushed up in the future; and we do not want to let this happen.

So, I'm not sure that the article actually indicates that this "premature aging" is bad - it gives both pros and cons related to cortical thinning seen in other situations?

If you are middle aged and your brain ages, you are sliding ever closer to the grave.......but if you are under 25 and it ages, you are still maturing into your adult form, and an acceleration in brain maturity (especially in areas related to specialisation and social communication, as it says) might be a good thing? Maybe boys carried on more as they always do as they didn't have that much in-depth conversation anyway at school, but girls moved on to more adult communication patterns at an earlier age as their usual teen reliance on a lot of face to face chat was disrupted?

I'm waiting for yet another one on getting rid of old people/pensioners dressed up as something else entirely.

Totally agree OP. The second and third lockdowns were the biggest public policy mistakes in peacetime imo.

Clearly there had to be some virus controls but schools should never have been shut and very low-risk outdoor activities should not have been banned.

I’d hope any future virus response would take a more balanced approach- of course protecting health attached is important, but society, education , the economy and other areas of health are also key.

And obviously, Partygate; although I am entertaining the possible-but-unlikely idea that it was a deliberate ploy to make the public so angry, that they would never want a lockdown again. The government knew that they were toast by then, and with their reckless spending, they would have thought nothing of bribing Boris with a few million to be a sacrificial lamb, and to take all the blame for it. The timing of Partygate seemed very convenient, somehow: one revelation after another, drip drip. I anticipated that some MPs would get caught out and unseated by spending Christmas 2020 with their extended families; I didn't expect something as blatant as the Downing Street parties.

It was convenient timing @scalt, but that's more likely to have been because it was known about and sat on until such a time as it became useful. Starmer appears to have known something was going on pretty early in the day. He had Johnson squirming over misleading Parliament in April 2021, for example.

https://x.com/Politics_co_uk/status/1387364614116052992

'I'll leave it there... for now'. That hits differently in retrospect! And Starmer has said more about this since, too.

news.sky.com/story/keir-starmer-reveals-how-he-set-trap-for-boris-johnson-over-partygate-scandal-13157083

Also the high handed, stupid defence of Dom Cummings and his castle trip in May 2020 will have given a good indication of how poorly the Tories were going to deal with any such revelations.

But I do not for one second believe this was a deliberate ploy or an attempt to make Boris a sacrificial lamb. Because he took so many of them down with him. If that was the aim, there'd have been no reason at all for most of the rest of the government to spend months gaslighting and putting up with him. He was a dead man walking for months before they finally disposed of him.

I’ve seen this on MN time and time again. Someone even suggested that pensioners should be made to stump up more of the money needed to fill the latest ‘black hole’ because the economy was ruined by lockdowns which were seemingly only for their benefit. As far as I was aware lockdowns were to try to limit the spread of Covid, and to stop the NHS being overwhelmed. It wasn’t only old people who were dying.

@Rosscameasdoody

The vast majority of those who died though were pensioners. The average age of a Covid death was 82.

OP, if people really cared about mental damage to children and the growing epidemic of anxiety and mental health issues, they wouldn't give their babies tablets and their tweens smartphones.

People want to panic retrospectively about lockdown. They don't actually want the consequences of tricky decisions where they have to say no to their own kids for the children's long-term benefit.

I wouldn't say covid has done that I would say phones tvs and iPads have a big part in it as most kids don't know basic skills anymore as they have there faces in the devices.

I'm not taking it personally just pointing out that it would be the children with smaller living space having a harder time in the lockdown not boys Vs girls. But that won't stop some taking this study of only 160 people as a reason to Moan about how their DDs had it so much harder than they boys despite the massive garden they had to frolik in.

Either way most people have gotten over the lockdown now and if reception children are having issues well they were literal newborns in the lockdown so find something else to blame. I say this as someone who wasn't even pro lockdown at the time

From the article “Girls chat endlessly and share their emotions”

Neither of my daughters are like this. My near-teen son is, but my teen daughters have never been the kind to need to 'chat endlessly'.

There are issues going on clearly, not sure we should be pinning it all on the lockdowns, or even on devices. It's likely a lot of things going on.

My kids (7&10) barely remember COVID and the restrictions etc

They barely remember yesterday!

Behind the Reception 2025 cohort, the children that weren't even born until post lockdowns are rapidly coming up. That is going to force a conversation on what is really going on. (BTW, I don't know what is really going on. All the kids I know are very run of mill nothing to report).

A sample of 160 children, of which half (presumably) are girls, is not enough to draw any definitive conclusions.
They did those initial scans before the pandemic existed - and as everyone lived through it there is no control group. However, some areas were much more affected with stricter lockdowns and school closures and other restrictions. A child that had minimal interruption compared to one who missed months of school and was kept at home - it would be interesting to see how their brains changed. But I imagine as the purpose of the study changed this isn't possible.

This doesn't surprise me at all. It was always clear that there would be consequences like this. I think we will still be discovering them right into the adulthood and old age of the very youngest ones who were born during the pandemic. It is good to see that it is starting to be revealed.

Oh piss off. I don't need you or any paid up article to implore me to consider the impact of the past few years on my girl; I see it with my own eyes. The pandemic had an effect on them - the lockdowns were a side effect of that pandemic.

A decision was made, a decision none of us would ever have liked to have been in charge of making. What's unforgiveable is the promises to nurture and support those affected, that have never transpired. That's where your anger should be directed.

But what this article - and the research that sits behind it - is saying that there appear to be structural changes to the brain as a result. So this suggests that it’s “not just whining” because something far more profound may be going on.

The research itself says “accelerated brain development has long been reported to be associated with trauma, abuse, deprivation and neglect in childhood”. And a study with 130 participants starting from 2018 gives some very interesting data.

I think this is just the sort of research that ought to be feeding into our pandemic planning. There are some complex trade-offs to be made between different populations on lockdowns/ school closures/ vaccinations etc, and just saying “well my kids are fine” doesn’t make it true at the population level.