Teens Are Thinking Like Adults Due To Pandemic Stress: Study

Due to the stress caused by the pandemic, teenagers are now thinking like adults, which can have serious consequences in the future. A new study says that due to these stresses, teenage children have lost their playfulness.

The study cited new findings suggesting that the neurological and mental health effects of the pandemic on adolescents may be worse. They have been published in Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science Journal.

According to a study by Stanford University of America, in 2020 alone, reports of anxiety and depression among adults have increased by more than 25 per cent compared to previous years. In this regard, Ian Gottlieb, author of the research paper said, "We know from global research that the pandemic has adversely affected the mental health of the youth. But we didn't know if there was an effect or how much the pandemic had physically affected their brains."

Gottlieb said that as we age, changes in the structure of the brain occur naturally. During early adolescence, children's bodies experience growth in both the hippocampus and the amygdala (regions of the brain that control access to certain memories and help organise emotions, respectively). At the same time, the tissues in the cortex become thinner.

Gottlieb's study, comparing MRI scans of a group of 163 children taken before and during the pandemic, found that the experience of lockdown accelerated this process of development in adolescents. Such rapid changes have been observed only in children who have been exposed to adversity for a long time. Be it violence, neglect, family problems or any other such reason.

These experiences are linked to poorer mental health outcomes later in life, Gottlieb said, but it's not clear whether the changes in brain structure that the Stanford team observed are linked to changes in mental health. Not that the changes are permanent. Gottlieb is also the director of the Stanford Neurodevelopment, Affect and Psychopathology (SNAP) Laboratory at Stanford University.

Co-author Jonas Miller from the University of Connecticut in the US said that, these findings could have serious consequences for a whole generation of adolescents in later life. Adolescence is already a period of rapid change in the brain, Miller said. It has already been linked to increased rates of mental health problems, depression and risk behaviours.

The study states that children who have experienced the pandemic. If rapid brain growth is to be believed, scientists will need to account for the abnormal rate of growth in any future research involving this generation, he said.