Student Well-Being What the Research Says

Teen Brains Aged Prematurely During the Pandemic. Schools Should Take Note

By Sarah D. Sparks — December 02, 2022 3 min read
Cracked silhouette of a person holding their head with illuminated gears in place of the brain.
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Teenagers’ brains aged years in a matter of months during the stress and isolation of the pandemic lockdowns.

A new study published in the journal Biological Psychiatry Global Open Science suggests that the pandemic caused similar effects to emotion and decisionmaking centers in the brain as chronic, toxic stress.

Researchers began tracking the development of more than 200 9- to 13-year-olds in Santa Clara County, Calif., in 2016. A ten-months-long lockdown in 2020 put that work on hiatus, but also created a natural experiment to test how the students were affected by the widespread social isolation, school disruption, financial instability, and health stresses.

See Also

Young adult holding up a lot of stress and pressure.
yokunen/iStock/Getty

“Every adolescent in the country went through the pandemic. ... and this is what we’re seeing as a consequence of having experienced yearlong lockdown,” said Ian Gotlib, professor and director of the Neurodevelopment, Affect, and Psychopathology Lab at Stanford University and lead author of the study. “We know that early adversity and stress can accelerate biological aging and brain maturation. It wasn’t so much the direction of the brain aging that surprised us; it was how pronounced it was for such a relatively short period of time.”

Compared to teenagers coming of age before the pandemic, those who experienced 10 months of lockdowns in 2020 showed three to four years of premature aging in the brain’s amygdala, hippocampus, and cerebral cortex.

Stress ‘aging’ in the brain

The cerebral cortex—the tightly folded bundle of neurons that makes up the outer layer of the brain—is associated with higher reasoning, language, and memory. It naturally thins as people age. Similarly, the hippocampus, also associated with concentration, learning, and memory, and the amygdala, associated with emotional regulation and impulse control, grow as children mature.

However, prior studies have shown that children who experience severe adversity, such as abuse or neglect, show premature aging, seen in thinned cortices and swelled amygdala and hippocampic regions of the brain. When related to toxic stress, these changes are in turn associated with higher risk of memory and learning problems and mental illnesses such as anxiety and depression—which may help to explain the sharp rise in mental health disorders among teenagers since the pandemic.

“It may not mean all that much that a 15-year-old’s brain looks like the brain of an 18- or 19-year-old,” Gotlib said. “But it’s the anxiety and depression and suicidal ideation and sadness and fearfulness—that spike that we’re seeing in the deterioration of mental health that I think is so important. And we’ve shown that it’s accompanied by alterations in the brain.”

But Gotlib’s findings don’t mean that teenagers won’t be able to recover academically or emotionally post-pandemic. Brain plasticity—the ability to adapt to new information and environments—isn’t really that different among adolescents of different ages.

Rather, he said, “I would want [school staff] to pay attention to the mental health data and be sure that they’re trying to support teens who are showing signs of emotional distress in any way that they can.”

In one recent survey, adolescents overwhelmingly report anxiety, depression, and stress have become their biggest barriers to learning.

Gotlib and his team plan to scan the teenagers again as they turn 20, to determine whether their brains return to their pre-pandemic developmental trajectory or if the changes continue over time. “We don’t know if this is going to persist or if this is simply a temporary response to the stress of a pandemic,” he said. “The accelerated aging could slow to put them back on track to their chronological age.”

They have already been able to predict which teenagers would be more resilient to pandemic stress based on their previous neurological development; for example, those who had more stable brain development previously were less likely to internalize toxic stress through depression.

The researchers are also starting to work with another team in Singapore, which has been tracking developmental changes to younger children during the pandemic.

See Also

Group of diverse people (aerial view) in a circle holding hands. Cooperation and teamwork. Community of friends, students, or volunteers committed to social issues for peace and the environment.
iStock/Getty Images Plus

Related Tags:

A version of this article appeared in the January 18, 2023 edition of Education Week as Teen Brains Aged Prematurely During the Pandemic. Schools Should Take Note

Events

Jobs Virtual Career Fair for Teachers and K-12 Staff
Find teaching jobs and other jobs in K-12 education at the EdWeek Top School Jobs virtual career fair.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Student Well-Being Opinion Is There a Secret to Faster Learning? Here’s What the Latest Research Says
Some students seem to learn quicker than others. But new research reveals that’s largely a myth.
Paulo Carvalho
1 min read
Images shows a stylized artistic landscape with soothing colors.
Getty
Student Well-Being Teen Girls Are Being Victimized by AI-Generated Nude Images
AI-generated deepfake nude images of teens were circulated at a schools in New Jersey and Washington.
5 min read
Dorota Mani sits for an interview in her office in Jersey City, N.J., on Nov. 8, 2023. Mani is the parent of a 14-year-old New Jersey student victimized by an AI-generated deepfake image.
Dorota Mani sits for an interview in her office in Jersey City, N.J., on Nov. 8, 2023. Mani is the parent of a 14-year-old New Jersey student victimized by an AI-generated deepfake image.
Peter K. Afriyie/AP
Student Well-Being How Districts Can Keep After-School and Summer Learning Alive After ESSER Dries Up
Roughly 8 in 10 school districts spent some of their federal COVID relief funds on after-school or summer learning.
4 min read
Multi-ethnic preschool boys playing with blocks.
E+ / Getty
Student Well-Being Kids Are Getting Priced Out of Youth Sports. How Schools Can Help
The rising costs of participating in organized youth sports is making these activities unaffordable for many families.
3 min read
Graham Bacigalupi, of Team Louisiana, watches from the dugout during the DYB, formerly Dixie Youth Baseball, Little League tournament in Ruston, La., on Aug. 8, 2023.
Graham Bacigalupi, of Team Louisiana, watches from the dugout during a Little League tournament in Ruston, La., on Aug. 8, 2023.
Gerald Herbert/AP