Children and COVID-19 Research Library

Childhood obesity is a nutritional disorder considered a serious public health problem worldwide because it is responsible for a large part of the emergence of chronic degenerative diseases and, consequently, raises the levels of morbidity and mortality. The beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to the increase in the rates of this comorbidity, as the established transmission containment measures led to a reduction in physical activity, an increase in screen time and anxiety-related disorders. Thus, the Healthy Lifestyle at School extension project, developed at the Faculty of Medicine of the Federal University of Cariri (UFCA), whose objective is to act in the identification, prevention and treatment of overweight and obesity in children and adolescents, recognized the need adapting face-to-face activities to the remote context. An account was created on the social network Instagram in order to alert about the problem and with the objective of reaching the target audience through educational, preventive and control measures against childhood obesity. The study is a qualitative analysis, of the experience report type, based on data obtained between April and September of the year 2020 on the Project’s social media page. It can be seen from this study that the challenge for extension projects to remain as guides for good health practices and remote knowledge production showed satisfactory results with the use of the social network as a tool for health promotion and education.

Literature has demonstrated the adaptive function of identity development and family context toward manifestation of problem behaviors in adolescence. The present research investigates: a) the influence of dysfunctional family dynamics on the Internet use; b) the impact that psychological and physical sensations - following excessive Internet use - can have on the quality of family relationships. The research involved 150 Italian students (65 males and 85 females) aged between 14 and 20 years (M =15.99, S.D = 1.94). The research lasted for 1 school year. Participants completed: an anamnestic questionnaire; the Family Assessment Device (FAD) in order to value the family functioning; and a self-report constructed ad hoc questionnaire, named “Adolescents and Digital Technologies” to measure frequency of use of social networks and Internet, the motivation for the use of social networks, the physical and psychological sensation perceived following their use.

The emergence of COVID 19 pandemic has severely impacted individuals from all walks of life. The present aims to evaluate the mass media impact on food habits, food preference and quality of life during the COVID 19 among adolescence. An questionnaire was framed and converted as Google form. The developed Google form was sent to 200 adolescents belonging to AC & RI and CSC & RI, Madurai and the received 200 responses from the students. The data obtained was consolidated.

Social media engagement has contributed to the rise of cyberbullying, which has recently triggered tragic suicides among adolescents. The objective of this cross-sectional study is to determine the prevalence of cyberbullying, suicidal behaviour, and their association among adolescents in Peninsular Malaysia. The study was conducted among 1290 secondary school adolescents aged between 13 and 17 years old in Peninsular Malaysia using a self-administered and anonymous online questionnaire.

Digital technology and social media use are common among young people in Australia and worldwide. Research suggests that young people have both positive and negative experiences online, but we know little about the experiences of Muslim communities. This study aims to explore the positive and negative experiences of digital technology and social media use among young people and parents from Muslim backgrounds in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. This study involved a partnership between researchers and a not-for-profit organization that work with culturally and linguistically diverse communities. We adopted a participatory and qualitative approach and designed the research in consultation with young people from Muslim backgrounds. Data were collected through in-person and online focus groups with 33 young people aged 16-22 years and 15 parents aged 40-57 years. Data were thematically analyzed.

In the interconnected family context, caregivers' digital media use holds important implications for children's developmental outcomes via parent-child relationships. This may be particularly salient during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, when caregivers were more reliant on technology than ever before. This study examined caregivers' psychological well-being, digital media use, and parenting practices, with a particular focus on specific aspects of media use. Caregivers (n = 549) with at least two children aged 5–18 participated in a multinational project examining family functioning and well-being amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Parents completed questionnaires assessing their psychological distress, media use habits, and parenting practices. Comparisons of structural regression models revealed that operationalizing caregivers' media use as a single general construct disregards important nuances in its relations to psychological distress and parenting.

Usage of YouTube for educational purposes became particularly relevant for teenagers as a support for their home-schooling. This study aimed to find out what strategies teenagers use to find relevant educational content on the service and how important this content was for their everyday learning practices before and during the COVID pandemic. It analyzed online behavior of 34, 14 to 15-year old teenagers (47% male) who took part in a long-term adventure trip with digital media left aside. It gathered quantitative data seven months before the trip (March 2019), just before the trip (October 2019), on the last day of the trip (April 2020), and five months after the trip (September 2020). It also conducted in-depth interviews with nine teenagers, who named YouTube as their favourite online service. Our intention is now to conduct nine additional interviews with the same teenagers to see whether their everyday learning practices changed within the last year. Implications drawn from this study, further research perspectives, and limitations will be presented and discussed.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created unique challenges for recruitment of adults and children into clinical research. The sudden onset of stay-at-home orders and social distancing enacted in much of the United States created sudden barriers for researchers to recruit participants in-person. Recognizing the critical need to understand the impact of COVID-19 on children and families in real time, studies required an alternative approach. The present study sought to develop methods and establish the feasibility of utilizing Facebook's targeted advertising to enroll schoolaged children and their parents for a study examining the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on families. This study used an 8 week pay-per-click advertisement approach via Facebook for research recruitment. Parents of children age 8 to 17 were invited and asked to include their child. Standardized measures were included for parents and children. Zip code targeting was used to increase diversity in participants.

The aim of this research was to establish the relationship between the perceptions of social support and the psychological well-being among adolescents during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This research, which includes descriptive and relative features, was conducted from December 15, 2020 to January 31, 2021. There were 378 participants, all of whom were adolescents aged from 13 to 18 years who were living in Turkey. Either the adolescents themselves or their parents used social media tools or sites such as Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, etc., and they had all agreed to participate voluntarily.

The purpose of the current research was to examine the predictors of cyberbullying victimization among South Korean students during a period in which the coronavirus disease was spreading worldwide. This study assessed whether parental guardianship protected against victimization when most people worked from home and school instructions were shifted to online learning. It analyzed nationally representative data collected between October 6 and November 13, 2020. Binary logistic regression models were developed based on the Routine Activities Theory theoretical model to investigate the correlates of cyberbullying victimization among participants.

COVID-19 has affected the health and well-being of tens of millions of people and contributed to smartphone addiction. The prior studies found several characteristics that influenced smartphone addiction, but little research was undertaken on the epidemic. This study aims to test a moderated mediation model of smartphone addiction. Three classes in each grade from grade 7 through grade 9 at random were recruited in the target junior high schools. A total of 931 Chinese adolescents (Mage=13.54 years, SDage =1.08) completed valid questionnaires via online surveys from February 5– 19, 2021.

The San Francisco Bay Area was the first region in the United States to enact school closures to mitigate SARS-CoV-2 transmission. The effects of closures on contact patterns for schoolchildren and their household members remain poorly understood. This study conducted serial cross-sectional surveys (May 2020, September 2020, February 2021) of Bay Area households with children to estimate age-structured daily contact rates for children and their adult household members. It examined changes in contact rates over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, including after vaccination of household members, and compared contact patterns by household demographics using generalized estimating equations clustered by household.