‘An Unprecedented Disruption’ — How Adolescents Are Coping With the Pandemic

Feature Story

Education

Pandemics

Health and Medicine

By Megan Lowry

Last update August, 23 2021

As millions of adolescents head back to school, how have the isolation and upheaval of the past year-and-a-half affected their mental health?

“An unprecedented disruption in the lives of kids and teens.” This is how a recent National Academies rapid expert consultation describes the pandemic, school closures, isolation, separation from family and friends, racial trauma, and economic upheaval of the last two years. Next month, many middle school, high school, and undergraduate students — who together represent nearly a quarter of all Americans — will resume their “normal” routine of going back to school.

But as adolescents — young people between the ages of 10 and 26 — return to familiar patterns and places, many kids, parents, and teachers are concerned how this unprecedented disruption has affected adolescents’ mental health and development. What happens when this period between childhood and adulthood, already marked by continuous physical and emotional growth, meets the profound shifts wrought by a pandemic?

The past two decades have brought major advances in what we know about the unique development that happens in adolescence, including how it changes our brains and behavior and shapes the course of our adult lives. What can science tell us about how the pandemic might impact adolescents in the years to come?

Mental Health and the Pandemic

Considering the many stressors placed on adolescents during the pandemic, “it’s not surprising that we would see an impact on young people’s mental health,” said Sharon Hoover, co-director of the National Center for School Mental Health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, during a recent National Academies workshop. She added, “Mental health related emergency department visits are up 31% for youth.” The recent National Academies consultation on youth mental health also points to an increase in youth stress, anxiety, depression, and suicide attempts.

But, Hoover also pointed out, “We know that social media and news headlines have been full of speculation and statements about children’s health worsening … there is also a legitimate concern about some of this sensationalization in the media.” Joanna Williams, a developmental psychologist and associate professor at Rutgers University who served on the committee that wrote the seminal National Academies report The Promise of Adolescence, also cautions against assuming that the pandemic has led to only negative mental health impacts for every adolescent.

I don’t think we can deny that it’s been stressful for everybody, but for many people and probably most people, this is a tolerable stress.

Williams says much of the pandemic’s impact on mental health will depend largely on individual circumstances. “I don’t think we can deny that it’s been stressful for everybody, but for many people and probably most people, this is a tolerable stress.” Citing text message data she reviewed from the American Voices Project, which asked adolescents in the fall of 2020 about their pandemic experiences, Williams says, “They weren’t all, all of a sudden, saying ‘I have mental health problems because of this.’ They were saying, ‘It sucks to not be able to go out and do new things or to see my friends.’”

However, Williams notes, “Those who had preexisting mental health vulnerabilities were probably where we saw, in our text message data, more of the struggle.”

Social Lives and Identities

The Promise of Adolescence report says young adults are primed for social interaction, and true to some teen stereotypes, the drive to belong and understand their social world is often the priority, explained Adriana Galván, a neuroscientist and professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, during another recent National Academies webinar. “We know that adolescents really need the social connection.”

“The constraints put on relationships and not being able to see friends was the No. 1 thing” that adolescents described as most difficult for them during the pandemic, says Williams. Moreover, according to Hoover, “Students are also just missing out on those rituals and routines and transitions that we know are critical in their development, whether it’s prom, or graduation, or goodbyes.”

Social interaction is also a key piece of the critical process that adolescents go through to form their own identities — to understand who they are and what place in the world they’ll occupy as adults. Williams says identity formation is an active process of comparison and learning: “It’s not that adolescents are just like, somebody else is going to tell me who I am. There’s this active back-and-forth. I’m processing information, but I’m also responding to the world and then getting feedback.”

So how did adolescents engage in this back-and-forth during lockdowns or school closures? Williams explains that despite new impediments, “New circumstances created new opportunities to test out new versions of yourself and to try new things in ways that you wouldn’t have ever been pushed to do, had we not been in these circumstances.” Adolescents stuck at home also found new ways to define themselves using the only social group available: their siblings and parents. Or, as Williams puts it, “re-imagining yourself in the family context.”

The asterisk comes when there are severe financial constraints and other hardships … the pressing issue is not figuring out who I am; the pressing issue is figuring out how I’m going to survive.

But identity development may have been put on pause for the most vulnerable. “The asterisk comes when there are severe financial constraints and other hardships … the pressing issue is not figuring out who I am; the pressing issue is figuring out how I’m going to survive,” says Williams.

Risk and Reward

Learning to both embrace and contain risk-taking is a critical skill for all adolescents to grapple with. The motivation to explore and take new risks holds specific appeal for the adolescent brain, and is rewarded with a rush of dopamine, Galván said. “Risk-taking serves a very adaptive purpose … and that is to get out into the world and explore, and to learn from new adventures … learning a new language, traveling to Europe for the summer, trying out for the school play.”

Williams says that when their opportunities to take risks socially or at school disappeared, there were still “a range of ways in which adolescents continued to remain in their exploration mode.” For example, she points out, “Last summer … the ways in which we saw boots on the ground activism in the name of racial justice. For young people, this was an opportunity to engage” and try something novel.

But Williams emphasizes that “being primed to take risks does not mean that they’re actually taking risks with the virus.” A big concern she has heard from adolescents throughout the pandemic was “I don’t want to spread [COVID-19] to my family members, and so I’m taking the right precautions.”

The Long-Term Impact

Scientists still have many questions left to ask and answer about the pandemic’s effect on adolescents — including how the sharp intensity of memories formed during adolescence may change their behavior in the decades to come, or how the pandemic might have shifted their priorities just as the first years of their adult lives begin to unfold.

It might be easy to assume the critical developmental advances that take place during adolescence were irreparably interrupted — especially for the most vulnerable adolescents — and that a global pause on teen development will have long-term effects in the coming decades for millions. However, experts agree that adolescents are uniquely adaptive and resilient, and these traits may help them avoid permanent setbacks.

The adolescent brain is plastic and keeps changing. It’s more likely to change than the adult brain.

“Decades ago we thought that the brain stopped developing at two, three, four, but … how the brain functions continues to develop through the mid-20s,” said Galván. “The adolescent brain is plastic and keeps changing. It’s more likely to change than the adult brain.”

“If we come across a stressor, a chronic stressor, or a trauma, our brain is quickly going to try to help us reconfigure that experience and adapt to it,” Galván added. “Although there are differences in the developmental trajectory of the brain in [those who experience trauma], it’s not the case that their brain is ruined, or damaged, or that they can never lead a normal life.”

The Promise of Adolescence points to the “trajectory model of the life course,” a theory that acknowledges this plasticity to explain how experiences in the early stages of life can set us back, but how others can move us forward. A loving parent or influential mentor during adolescence might balance out a negative, like missed school or personal loss.

Evidence collected through the Strong African American Families Program, a seven-week randomized controlled trial of 667 families from rural Georgia, demonstrates this concept. The study showed how programming to foster supportive parenting and help adolescents develop skills not only had positive behavioral effects — like a lower likelihood of using drugs and fewer conduct problems — but also physical benefits. Adolescents who participated experienced reduced inflammation and remarkable protective effects for the brain, some of which could be seen in brain scans even 25 years after they had taken part in the program.

Williams explains that protective forces and supports may also be able to cancel out harms brought by the pandemic. “For many of the adolescents … they have some supports in their immediate environment,” says Williams, such as friends, parents, or teachers. “That’s going to stave off what I would consider the ‘lost generation’ narrative.” She adds, “Typically you don’t see, on the mental health side, major declines that affect a whole generation.”

This article is the first in a series exploring how the pandemic has affected younger Americans and their families. The next article will explore how K-12 schools can best prepare to support youth mental health and development as students return to the classroom this fall.

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