Hubbard and her research team have been following a group of young
people for many years, beginning when they were in fourth or fifth grade
and continuing to their current time as high school students. Her lab
focuses on children’s and adolescents’ aggression, which research has
shown is often linked with depression, and on teens who have challenging
peer interactions, either as victims or aggressors.
By chance, her team had just completed a large laboratory-based data
collection effort with teens in February 2020, just before the pandemic
upended school and social activities. The researchers, Hubbard said,
decided to use that data to look into the effects of isolation on those
with difficult peer relationships. A group of about 100 of the teens
completed additional questionnaires assessing their depressive and
anxious symptoms several months later, in the early months of the
pandemic.
The researchers found that, while teens in general reported increased
depression and anxiety from pre- to mid-pandemic, adolescents who had
problematic peer relationships before the pandemic did not experience
those increases.
“The COVID studies [conducted by other researchers] suggest that, for
most adolescents, reductions in face-to-face interactions with peers
during the pandemic likely have contributed to feelings of loneliness
and isolation,” Hubbard and her co-authors wrote in their paper. “In
contrast, the picture might look quite different for adolescents who
experienced particularly challenging peer relations” before the
pandemic.
“Of course, the pandemic was difficult for all teenagers in many
ways, just as it was for everyone,” Hubbard said. “But it’s possible
that some teenagers with particularly difficult peer relationships prior
to the pandemic actually experienced improved quality of life during
the pandemic.”
These findings should remind parents and teachers how stressful
interacting with peers can be for some teens, she said. From her
viewpoint as a clinician, in addition to being a researcher, she urged
schools and parents to keep an especially close eye on how young people
who struggled with peer relationships before the pandemic are doing as
they return to in-person activities.
Hubbard also expressed concern for the effects of the pandemic
isolation on younger children, who lost out on the kind of socialization
that occurs in in-person school at a critical developmental time in
their lives. She urged parents and schools to think about that loss and
to give young children time to play and adapt to renewed social
interactions.
From solving problems with other children when they disagree, to
learning how to share, to figuring out another child’s facial
expression, “There’s a lot you learn in face-to-face kindergarten that
you just can’t learn over Zoom,” Hubbard said.
