Lockdowns Make Children Crazy

Debates about the pandemic lockdowns never consider the downside of this policy. This is especially cruel when we are dealing with the fallout from school closures.

Obviously, the teachers’ unions claim that children are so resilient that they will quickly recover the lessons and the cognitive development that they lost. We ought to question this prophecy, and to subject it to some serious scrutiny. Perhaps it is too early to tell, but it seems to be the case that school shutdowns have damaged children.

As for the mental health consequences of these shutdowns, we now have a report from the Surgeon General of the United States. He explains that the shutdowns have severely damaged the mental health of children.

And, of course, this comes from the Biden administration.

The New York Times has the story:

The United States surgeon general on Tuesday warned that young people are facing “devastating” mental health effects as a result of the challenges experienced by their generation, including the coronavirus pandemic.

The message came as part of a rare public advisory from the nation’s top physician, Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, in a 53-page report noting that the pandemic intensified mental health issues that were already widespread by the spring of 2020.

The report cited significant increases in self-reports of depression and anxiety along with more emergency room visits for mental health issues. 

In the United States, emergency room visits for suicide attempts rose 51 percent for adolescent girls in early 2021 as compared to the same period in 2019. The figure rose 4 percent for boys.

Look closely at the last paragraph. The children who were most likely to be victimized by the shutdowns, the children who were most likely to attempt suicide were-- adolescent girls. The number for boys was about flat with previous data. The number for girls spiked by more than 50%.

Might this not be exposing something about the lives of today’s American girls. Aren’t they fully liberated, allowed to be as boyish as boys are, to be exploring their sexuality, and so on? Does their feminist upbringing contribute to this horrifying statistic?

But, do we want to blame it on social media?

The Times report continues:

Although blame for adolescent distress is often pinned on social media, screen time alone does not account for the crisis, many researchers say. Rather, social media and other online activities act more to amplify an adolescent’s existing mental state, causing some young people to feel more distress and others to experience enhanced feelings of connection.

These children do not connect or do not know how to connect in their everyday lives, so the pandemic has only aggravated a trend. Whatever comes first, a generation that tries to connect over social media is especially vulnerable to mental health disorders.

As one psychologist explained, connecting over social media, or even through text messaging, is an inadequate substitute for the real thing. Rather than wonder about decamping for the metaverse, we ought to tamp down social media, and encourage young people to meet up face to face.

Bonnie Nagel, a pediatric neuropsychologist at Oregon Health & Science University who treats and studies adolescents, said that online interactions appear not to satisfy core needs for connection. And recent research by her and her colleagues found that the feeling of loneliness is a key predictor for depression and suicidal ideation.

“I don’t think it is genuine human connection when talking to somebody with a fake facade online,” Dr. Nagel said.