Metherell, Thomas E;
Ghai, Sakshi;
McCormick, Ethan M;
Ford, Tamsin J;
Orben, Amy;
(2022)
Digital access constraints predict worse mental health among adolescents during COVID-19.
Scientific Reports
, 12
, Article 19088. 10.1038/s41598-022-23899-y.
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Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing social restrictions disrupted young people’s social interactions and resulted in several periods during which school closures necessitated online learning. We hypothesised that digitally excluded young people would demonstrate greater deterioration in their mental health than their digitally connected peers during this time. We analysed representative mental health data from a sample of UK 10–15-year-olds (N = 1387) who completed a mental health inventory in 2017–2019 and thrice during the pandemic (July 2020, November 2020 and March 2021). We employed longitudinal modelling to describe trajectories of adolescent mental health for participants with and without access to a computer or a good internet connection for schoolwork. Adolescent mental health symptoms rose early in the COVID-19 pandemic, with the highest mean Total Difficulties score around December 2020. The worsening and subsequent recovery of mental health during the pandemic was greatly pronounced among those without access to a computer, although we did not find evidence for a similar effect among those without a good internet connection. We conclude that lack of access to a computer is a tractable risk factor that likely compounds other adversities facing children and young people during periods of social isolation or educational disruption.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Digital access constraints predict worse mental health among adolescents during COVID-19 |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41598-022-23899-y |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-23899-y |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Social Research Institute |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10185417 |
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