Digital access during COVID-19 and young people’s mental health
Our new paper in Scientific Reports finds a potential link between digital exclusion during the pandemic and poorer mental health in adolescents.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-23899-y
The COVID-19 pandemic is known to have had a significant impact on the mental health of young people, with elevated anxiety, depression and psychological distress. These observations come on top of the already worrying trends in adolescent mental health that existed before the pandemic, with the incidence of probable mental health disorders rising from 11% in 2017 to 16% in 2020.
These trends in young people are particularly worrying because adolescence is a time of heightened neurodevelopmental vulnerability – that is to say that mental health difficulties in adolescence can result in consequences that continue well into adulthood. As a result, it is important to question how we can protect the mental health of adolescence, particularly in destabilising circumstances such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
For most adolescents, a salient impact that the pandemic will have had on their daily lives was the closure of schools and the shift to online learning. In spite of efforts to protect disadvantaged children, the evidence shows that the impacts of educational disruption were not felt equally. One study showed that 30% of middle-class students reported taking part in daily lessons, compared to only 16% of working-class students.
Access to computers was key in allowing young people to remain connected during the pandemic, by allowing them to both ‘attend’ school virtually and keep up with friends through video games and social media. Without access to a computer, adolescents may have faced a greater sense of isolation, and this has the potential for pervasive impacts on their mental health in times where lockdown measures were strict.
To examine in detail the impact of digital exclusion on the mental health of young people, we examined data from 1,387 10–15-year-olds collected as part of Understanding Society, a longitudinal survey of around 40,000 UK households. Participants completed the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, which summarises mental health in five areas (hyperactivity/inattention, prosocial behaviour, emotional, conduct and peer relationship problems) and also yields an overall ‘Total Difficulties score’.
We used latent growth curve modelling to model participants’ mental health before and during the first year of the pandemic, grouping them according to whether or not they had access to a computer and adjusting for socioeconomic factors. Our models showed that the Total Difficulties scores of both groups increased from the pre-pandemic baseline value of 10.5 (out of 40, where a higher score represents worse overall mental health).
However, in the group with computer access, the peak modelled value was 11.2, while in the group without access it was 17.8. 24% in the group without access had modelled scores classed as ‘high’ or ‘very high’, compared with only 14% in the group with access.
Our results show that equitable digital access may be important to avoid creating disparities in the mental health of adolescents during times of acute social isolation. Accordingly, we call on policymakers and public health officials to recognise and act on the threat of digital exclusion to the mental health of young people.
Future research should produce a richer understanding of the subject using a mixed-
methods approach, and by oversampling digitally excluded populations to bolster the power of analyses and allow for a more nuanced investigation of the risks of digital exclusion.
If you are curious to learn more, you can find the full paper, with open access, here.