Covid lockdowns prematurely aged girls’ brains more than boys’, study finds. MRI scans found girls’ brains appeared 4.2 years older than expected after lockdowns, compared with 1.4 years for boys.

[u/mvea]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/sep/09/covid-lockdowns-prematurely-aged-girls-brains-more-than-boys-study-finds

[u/CoolNebula1906]

Idk why you would be so convinced that a long period of relative social isolation has not affected childrens brain development

[u/UnionThug456 → u/CoolNebula1906]

Schools where I live were closed for less than 6 weeks total and many of those weeks weren't consecutive. Many, many people around here disregarded the lockdowns when it came to their kids also. Even if the parents weren't going out, kids were hanging out with each other at each other's houses. Maybe more urban areas had "long periods" of social isolation but that definitely didn't happen where I live. I was far more isolated during the summers of my youth than the covid generation was during their school year.

[u/Duffalpha → u/UnionThug456]

Things were a LOT different than you describe in certain countries. There were definitely consecutive months of strict lockdown where school was cancelled, for almost 2 years straight - at least here in Europe. I don't know where the kids from the study are from, but it looks like the researchers have international backgrounds - so it really depends...

I don't think the global average was just 6 weeks...

[u/CoolNebula1906 → u/UnionThug456]

Less than six weeks total only because it happened at the end of a school year. It disrupted all sorts of structured activities such as soccer leagues, etc. Lots of things became "socially distanced". Maybe in Bumfuck Pennsylvania nobody observed these regulations but that is an exception to the rule. Cities are not an edge case to be disregarded, most people live in a major Metropolitan area or a city.

[u/[deleted] → u/CoolNebula1906]

Removes the social and societal aspect of it and puts the fault in something you can easily blame.

[u/romjpn → u/CoolNebula1906]

Because for some people there's a tendency to defend anything that was attempted to stop COVID. Now what would be interesting would be to compare countries who had long and harsh lockdowns to ones who didn't have any. Here in Japan my nephew still has a hard time taking off his mask. We need to remember that for kids, 3 years was for many, more than half of their current lifetime. The impact is disproportionate compared to adults who experience time differently.