Children and COVID-19 Research Library

More and more educational institutions have to replace face-to-face classes with online learning classes or e-learning due to the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19). To create efficient online learning experiences, students’ readiness and willingness to join e-learning activities must be considered. A few aspects to consider are how accessible online learning technology is to the participants, their proficiency in using e-learning devices, and their motivation in joining online learning, especially online EFL classes. Therefore, this study attempted to understand those aspects of online learning by gathering survey feedback from a group of students. The survey participants were seventh-grade students of Muhammadiyah 2 Junior High School of Purwokerto, Indonesia. Data were collected using a five-point Likert scale questionnaire. The results of the survey would be analysed to find out frequencies, means, and standard deviations.

Adolescence is a formative period for socio-emotional development which is threatened by the COVID-19 pandemic. The current longitudinal study examined two aims: (1) the short- and long-term effects of the pandemic on young people’s mood (i.e. vigor, tension, and depression levels) and emotional reactivity (i.e. fluctuations in daily mood), and (2) the impact of stressors on mood, emotional reactivity, self-oriented (i.e. maladaptive behavior towards COVID-19 rules) and other-benefitting behaviors (i.e. behavior aimed at helping and comforting others).

This cross-sectional study explored the relationship between loneliness and problematic mobile phone use among Chinese adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic, considering the effects of escape motivation and self-control. 1034 adolescents (mean age 15.76 ± 1.20 years) from China have been recruited. The results showed that loneliness was positively associated with escape motivation and adolescent problematic mobile phone use.

The COVID-19 pandemic presents unique stressors (e.g. social isolation) that may increase substance use risk among young adults with a history of emotional disturbance. This study examined whether emotional disorder symptoms and transdiagnostic vulnerabilities during adolescence predicted young adult substance use during COVID-19, and whether using substances to cope with the pandemic’s social conditions mediated these associations.

Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) is a newly identified and serious health condition associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection. Clinical manifestations vary widely among patients with MIS-C, and the aim of this study was to investigate factors associated with severe outcomes.

Cognitive models of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) propose that trauma entails cognitive alterations of increased distrust and perceived threat from others. We tested whether these predictions also hold in individuals with varying levels of childhood maltreatment (CM), which is much more prevalent than traumatic events as required for a PTSD diagnosis. This study hypothesized that higher levels of CM would entail greater distrust and perceived threat, and that distrust would be more change-resistant in participants with more CM.

This study aims to describe COVID‐19 deaths among children and adolescents in Sergipe, Brazil. It is an ecological study of all COVID‐19 reported cases and deaths occurring in children and adolescents <19 years of age in Sergipe reported by the health surveillance and mortality information systems of Sergipe’s Health Secretary and hospital records.

The report presents the findings from a rapid survey conducted in Thailand in order to understand the challenges that children left behind and their families are facing as a result of the COVID-19 epidemic. The assessment consisted of phone surveys to households with children left behind based on the previously sampled population from Khonkaen and Pitsanulok provinces where the rate of children left behind are particularly high. The survey results show the immediate and large-scale socio-economic impact of COVID-19 that affected nearly all children, including children left behind.

Not only do epidemics such as HIV/AIDS, Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), and the current Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) cause the loss of millions of lives, but they also cost the global economy billions of dollars. Consequently, there is an urgent need to formulate interventions that will help control their spread and impact when they emerge. The education of young girls and women is one such historical approach. They are usually the vulnerable targets of disease outbreaks – they are most likely to be vehicles for the spread of epidemics due to their assigned traditional roles in resource-limited countries. Based on our work and the work of others on educational interventions, this study proposes six critical components of a cost-effective and sustainable response to promote girl-child education in resource-limited settings.

As cases of COVID-19 continue to spread worldwide it is becoming clear that the outbreak of this virus has implications that reach far beyond the direct impact on people’s physical health. What started as a health emergency is causing fundamental shifts in society as governments struggle to try and contain the crisis. COVID-19 is having an impact on all sectors of society across the world. But its impact does not fall equally: the virus is taking advantage of pre-existing inequalities. As the world has sought desperately to deal both with the medical impacts of the virus and to prepare a response to its many secondary effects, research on COVID-19 has accelerated. However, there is limited research on the social impacts of COVID-19 and on the consequences for young people, especially those specific to girls. Plan International commissioned research to look specifically at the impact of the current pandemic on girls and young women, collecting data from over 7,000 girls across 14 countries. The report also includes extracts from interviews with young women, reflecting on the impact COVID-19 has had on their lives in Mozambique, Brazil, Ghana and Nicaragua. The scale of this pandemic affects girls and young women in all aspects of their daily lives: their safety, wellbeing, education, economic security, health, nutrition and access to technology. All pre-existing inequalities are made worse by COVID-19. Its impact on girls and young women, who face unique vulnerabilities, needs to be acknowledged and it is their experiences and perspectives this research seeks to understand.

The pandemic caused by the global spread of the coronavirus Covid-19 is harming social, educational and health well-being of children, with the most vulnerable being hit the hardest. Children are being impacted directly, through school, extra-curricular and childcare facilities closures, social distancing and confinement, which puts a heavy burden on their educational, cognitive and emotional development, with the risk of increasing their anxiety and stress levels. Children are also being impacted indirectly, through the reduction of household incomes, which reduces their material and social well-being, impairs access to social and healthcare, while also exposing the hardest hit to risks malnutrition. It is critical to understand that the negative impact of the Covid-19 crisis may be particularly strong for some groups of children including those living in poverty, children with disabilities, children deprived of parental care, children in detention and so on. Furthermore, negative impacts of this scale may extend well beyond the short term spreading childhood poverty across many childhood years or beyond.