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/Mysfunction]

Yep, and the evidence doesn’t support the conclusion in this article at all.

[u/Altruistic-Order-661 → u/Mysfunction]

Correct. The only thing that isn’t super nuanced in the article is that girls tend to be more social (in general), which could by why that deprecation of community/social interactions could be more detrimental during adolescence. Again very general but that all I’m picking up that they are putting down

[u/Mysfunction → u/Altruistic-Order-661]

I agree that could have a psychological impact in some circumstances, but it is incredibly unlikely considering the so-called “lockdowns” were well under six months for the majority of North America and they were generally not heavily restrictive for the majority of that time, so socializing was unlikely to have been disrupted for a substantial enough time to make an impact.

Also, this article is arguing about brain aging, which is not a psychology phenomenon, but a biological one.

[u/Altruistic-Order-661 → u/Mysfunction]

I’m not sure where you live but where I live the kids didn’t go to school for over a year and every time they had a cold we had to take a week off for pcr testing to come back because they didn’t take rapid tests for almost another year. It was pretty dang dramatic imo. I would say for at least a year, children and their families lives were turned upside down in many parts of the world. Not only could they not go to school they couldn’t even go to parks or outdoor spots, remember all of the caution tape around playgrounds for nearly a year? Remember police showing up at peoples homes during Xmas parties nearly a year after Covid started?

[u/Mysfunction → u/Altruistic-Order-661]

I’m not using anecdotal observation from where I live to make the statement, I’m using data that describes the general experience in North America. Those restrictions were very limited in time for the vast majority of North Americans.

[u/Altruistic-Order-661 → u/Mysfunction]

Well it certainly wasn’t for the most populous states (aside from maybe Texas in the US?) And that’s certainly not anecdotal. Can you show me some data that the “so called” lockdowns were and under 6 months for most of North America? I’m assuming Canada is part of north America correct?

[u/Mysfunction → u/Altruistic-Order-661]

If we want to measure lockdowns by school closures, this article gives really great data.

Effectively this demonstrates that while all schools were closed from March to June of 2020, at most 1/8 experienced closures for 7 weeks in the following school year, and that’s assuming that those spikes were all the same schools, which is not the case. Those spikes each would have been a different mixture of schools, so it is well under 1/8 of schools that experienced 2 months of closures in the following school year.

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/30/1/23-1215_article#:~:text=However%2C%20the%20initial%20months%20(February,slow%20virus%20transmission%20and%20reduce

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/30/1/23-1215-f1

And, again, that’s only if we measure lockdown by school closures, which was the most stringent of lockdown measures. Much of this time playgrounds and restaurants were open and people were allowed to gather in small groups.