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Although memories of COVID-19 lockdowns in Danish school children dimmed in detail and emotion from 2020 to 2021, their mental health remained poor, particularly among girls, Aarhus University–led researchers report in Child Development.
The researchers asked 247 students to write about their memories of the first lockdown and their psychological symptoms three times from June 2020 to June 2021. The students, recruited from five public and private schools, had a median age of 11.9 years.
Denmark closed schools from March 11 to April 17, 2020, for younger students and to May 18 for older ones. A second closure occurred from December 17, 2020, to May 6, 2021. Other measures taken were restaurant closures, gathering bans, physical-distancing policies, and work-from-home orders.
Older students, teen girls most emotional
Students whose memories were more negative and contained more COVID-19 information fared worse over time, which may mean that they integrated lockdown experiences more profoundly in their development and sense of self, the researchers said.
Only by examining the content of all these different memories will we know if these results reported here are specific to the first period of the pandemic... or if instead our patterns of results extend to other forms of remembering and imagining pandemic-related experiences.
-Tirill Fjellhaugen Hjuler, PhD
Older students and adolescent girls were the most emotional in their memory descriptions, which may show that adolescents better integrate memories into their meaning-making narratives than younger students. And adolescent girls, the authors said, may be more likely than boys to elaborate on memories of COVID-19 and their emotional well-being. --->READ MORE HERE
Student cellphone bans are quickly becoming the buzziest back-to-school topic as more states work to keep phones away from kids from "bell to bell" or throughout the school day.
Virginia is one of the latest states to propose a cellphone ban after Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed an executive order in July to address "the alarming mental health crisis and chronic health conditions affecting adolescents." The momentum is continuing in California, with the nation's second-largest school district in Los Angeles voting to ban cellphones and social media use for over 420,000 K-12 students by the spring semester of the 2024-2025 school year.
The move comes as parents debate when or even whether to give their kids cellphones in the first place and experts like "The Anxious Generation" author and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argue more children are being harmed by cellphone use instead of benefiting from it.
Scientific research suggests increased phone and social media use among children and teens has led to an increase in psychological impacts and mental health issues, leading the U.S. surgeon general to call for health warnings for younger users on social media platforms. A March 2024 study published in JAMA Network Open focused on children 5 and under and also found that just one extra hour of screen time, from one to two hours or more, led to lower psychological well-being scores.
A renewed focus on cellphones
School staffers and teachers say more students turned to phones and computers in the last four years since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 led to more remote learning, and the increase in screen time has persisted since then.
The recent push for no phones in classrooms comes as teachers and administrators say students now tend to be more distracted when they use cellphones and social media excessively throughout the day.
At a June meeting of the Los Angeles Unified School District board, where the vote to ban phones passed, high school math teacher Jessica Quindel described the fight to keep students off phones as an "uphill battle." --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
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