Researchers continue to discover more unintended consequences from the COVID-19 pandemic, with the latest study suggesting that the pandemic impacted the brains of teens, causing them to age prematurely.
According to the study published on Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the pandemic caused some adolescents’ brains to age quicker than what is normally seen.
This affected girls the most, with their brains being found to have aged 4.2 years faster on average, while the brains of some boys aged 1.4 years faster.
The study points to the “lifestyle changes” from lockdown measures enacted during the pandemic as the reason for the “unusually accelerated brain maturation in adolescents.”
“The result was a massive disruption to daily routines, including the inability to work and go to school, and severe restrictions in social activities for billions of people around the world,” the study shared. “These restrictive measures had a substantial negative impact on the mental health of adolescents, with females more adversely affected than males.”
From the data, researchers concluded that female brains were found to have a “greater vulnerability” compared to the male brain.
The study points to concerns from accelerated brain maturation, including an increased risk of developing behavioral and other disorders like anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and more.
Dr. Patricia K. Kuhl, the senior author of the study, shared with CNN that the findings are a “wake-up call about the fragility of the teenage brain.”
“Teens need our support now more than ever,” Kuhl, the Bezos Family Foundation Endowed Chair in Early Childhood Learning and co-director of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, said.
The authors note that a significant amount of socio-emotional development occurs during adolescence, as well as substantial changes to the brain’s structure and how it operates, the authors shared.
Through the thickness of the cerebral cortex, which naturally peaks during childhood, they were able to examine how the brains of those affected changed over time.
When it comes to how this can be resolved, Kuhl shared that they don’t yet know whether the effects on the brain are permanent, and a “total return to ‘normal’ may never occur.”
“The brain does not recover and get thicker, we know that, but one measure of whether the teens show recovery after the pandemic is over and social normalcy has completely returned is whether their brains thin more slowly,” Kuhl said. “If that was the case, we could say that teens’ brains showed some recovery. That’s a study we can actually do in the future.”