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)!

If there are changes, I suspect it's more to do with kids being on their devices constantly and lockdown made that worse because there was bugger all else to do. I bet that is having a negative effect on people. You can see it in many ways. We as societies are changing as we move more and more from face to face interactions to online ones and withdraw into our own little bubbles. People are getting angrier, more selfish, more demanding. (Generally).

Of course increased use of tech has benefits as well but I do think we will find our use of technology is changing our brains and our development and lockdown only caused us to notice it.

Agree with this. There is already (non-covid related) data that shows that exposure to social media negatively affects girls to a greater degree than boys.

@Flossflower

What age qualifies 'oldies' to cease to have any value?

I agree that social media has had an effect (although I certainly don’t advocate banning it).

However, social media was here in different guises when my DC were at secondary (they left on 2016) and we didn’t have anywhere near the same issues with mental health in DC.

The most substantial cause in my view is definitely lockdown.

It does make me wonder sometimes

Children in this country had a label tied around their necks, they were shoved onto trains and shipped around the country to complete strangers who in some cases physically and mentally abused them, they were sometimes forced to work on the farms/shops etc. Not everyone got a Mr Tom. I'm not sure on this but I don't think they were sent to one place en-masse from a school so they didn't see their friends, they could of course write. Not sure just how many people had a telephone or the financial means to use one. They also didn't know if their parents were going to survive the bombs

Those who refused to go (my mom) spent nights in the air raid shelters (again not my mom neither she or my grandmother would go down) but still had to hand their homework in the next day, no excuses

Parents sent their children away because they thought it was best for them. I expect many of those children would disagree.

Were studies done on the effects this had on them? I don't believe so, it was war.

Perhaps we should remind ourselves of this fact when there are constant studies on how lockdown has affected children. Yes they were scared, don't blame them, but they were with their parents, could visually communicate with their friends even if they couldn't physically meet up with them.

I don't want to minimise either of these groups experiences and it's not a race to the bottom. It's just something that has bothered me

There are quite a few studies about WW2 evacuation in this country. This one was the first link I found in a two-min google for posting here (this one was done decades later, looking at whole-life outcomes) but it lists others at the side and there are many more around.
Long-term effects of the British evacuation of children during World War 2 on their adult mental health: Aging & Mental Health: Vol 13 , No 3 - Get Access (tandfonline.com)

No thanks. Us teavhers don’t want to be hung out to die. Also this isn’t exactly a good source. Biased and flawed

Excellent comment when other people think they can decide who dies

Thank you I will go and read. I honestly hadn't expected that any studies would have been conducted or even survived to appear on the internet

My kids loved lockdown. Their grades went up too.

I agree that more support is needed but we need to be mindful of where it goes. As others have said, poverty, socioeconomic status and other factors contributed to how much children have suffered due to lockdown.

My daughter was born in Feb 2020, we prepared for lockdown by forming a bubble with my parents who live in a big house with a garden in a rural area with lots of space. She had 5 weeks of the attention of 4 adults, unlimited space, daily walks in her pram in beautiful weather, before we had to go home.

The rest of the summer, we were in a small flat but still got out for a long walk in the sunshine every day, no well-meaning relatives coming to give unwanted advice about parenting, no stressing out over a packed diary of events, just going to see the ducks on the river and watching the seasons change gradually.

She has just started school and is advanced in every area and very sociable. Lockdown served us, as a family, wonderfully. That's not been the case for every family.

Excellent points. One of the consequences of the covid policy response is that it exacerbated inequality, and that very much applies to children as well. We were not all in the same boat at all.

I think this is the crux of it. And we as a society need to accept this on its own terms instead of immediately getting defensive and repeating ‘but the alternative was letting people’s grannies die!’

Children and young people, in particular those who were already facing challenges due to poverty, mental health etc, have on the whole been negatively affected by the response to the pandemic. It will take decades to fully know the extent of the impacts, but it’s fair to say a lot of lives will not be lived to the full, and some lives will be shorter and unhappier than they would have been had the pandemic not happened.

And I really hope that if another pandemic occurs politicians and society as a whole are able to take this wider longer-term view when making decisions. Sometimes the obvious choice, or the one that sounds good in the short term, is not the right choice.

SM as fucked up a lot of kids as well as some of the parents with their style of parenting.

Exactly. They can't wait to kill them off on MN. ( elsewhere the NHS - the whole debacle over DNR during covid, the myriad of adverts for funeral plans, the government stance on the Winter fuel allowance... my parents feel they are a hindrance to this country after working their entire lives and living a simple life with not much money but have always tried to help others.
It makes me feel sick.

Research has shown the Covid virus itself can seriously impact the brain, how do we know it’s lockdowns and not the virus itself that has impacted children?
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-19-leaves-its-mark-on-the-brain-significant-drops-in-iq-scores-are/?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_medium=social

Please read OP. As usual the media contorts the facts. Just think of the harm The Women's Health Initiative study did to women's health, many women are still to scared to take HRT as they blew the cancer risk greatly out of proportion & the media spread this study like wildfire. This thread is very informative regarding the study mentioned in that guardian article:

https://x.com/BlakeMMurdoch/status/1833364847867924820?t=qJqKnuPbZvPj1Yz3NmQ7dQ&s=19

Remember that correlation is not causation when it comes to scientific research.

Now Labour are going after pensioners and there are many pro Labour posters the threads are full of pretty revolting stuff about pensioners.

The WFA threads are grim.

We don’t, because the authors of the paper didn’t make any attempt to identify and control for confounding factors. They didn’t consider differences in social media use between the test and control group which would certainly have been significant as the control group were non-contemporaneous. It doesn’t look like good science to me. The fact that it got reviewed and approved by presumably respected academics in the field (one of them a professor at Harvard) makes me wonder how much of psychology is basically junk.

You've been saying that on at least 2 threads today.

I responded YABU because this research doesn't actually say any thing about whether or not it's a negative thing - all speculative.

Regarding lockdown - I completely agree. We are a max high risk household and flowed all the same les which lsr most people around us did not. Our DC didn't take GCSEs - in March June St after lockdown predicted 7s 8s and a couple of 9s - schools decided to downgrade across the board (only school that did so). This t ally affeved which uni courses they could apply for and they had to completely rethink the process uei plan. No prom, no 16th birthday party, no partyjng at all, no 18th party. No first holiday with friends. DGF died in hospital (caught covid AFTER his op in physical rehab unit) - all ne and we didn't get to say goodbye.

I now believe the whole thing was a social experiment to see how the populace could be controlled and to what extent when the it basic rights are removed.

A while le generation of children have been fucked up by lockdown and paranoia and will probably never fully recover.

There has been quite an impact on mental health of young people. The waiting lists for treatment are off the charts and only the most serious cases are being seen (cases that involve threat to life).
Many wonder if their qualifications are valid, there are a lot struggling to find their way career/education wise because they haven't been tested in the normal way. Anxiety will be aging the brain prematurely. Skipping over that mid-late teen phase where you do stupid things with your mates and make bad decisions will age your brain age prematurely.
I'm not an expert by any means by I'm a mum, a teacher and a youth work volunteer so I encounter lots of young people daily and this is what I am seeing.