Children and COVID-19 Research Library

Research on COVID-19’s effect on substance use is mixed, and few studies have focused on adolescents. This study assessed whether implementation of the COVID-19 lockdown affected substance use and changed perceptions of psychoactive substance availability in middle and high school students. It assessed self-reported use and perceived availability of alcohol, tobacco cigarettes, electronic cigarettes, marijuana, synthetic marijuana, nonprescribed prescription drugs, and illicit drugs (heroin, inhalants) among middle and high school respondents aged 11-18 years to the Rhode Island Student Survey (N = 17 751). An administrative pause because of COVID-19 lockdowns allowed us to divide results into surveys completed before (January through March 2020; n = 13 259) and after (November 2020 through May 2021; n = 4492) the lockdown implementation. The study determined the effects of the COVID-19 lockdown using logistic regression models, adjusting for age, gender/sexual orientation, middle/high school level, and city/town classification.

As a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, social-distancing measures have been implemented worldwide, including school closures. Previous studies indicated that children's relational social cohesion with family (RSC-Fa) and friends (RSC-Fr) may have decreased during the pandemic, but some children described that positive experiences were gained from the confinement measures of social distancing. Mostly, these studies are qualitative or capture a single country and have an exploratory character. Using data collected in 2021 of more than 20,000 children primarily aged 9–13 years as part of the International Children's Worlds COVID-19 Supplement Survey from 18 countries (Germany, Turkey, Bangladesh, Italy, Albania, Romania, Chile, Wales, Taiwan, Belgium, Algeria, Israel, Russia, South Korea, Indonesia, Estonia, Finland, and Spain), this study aimed to examine how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected children's RSC-Fa and RSC-Fr and explore the role of relational factors. RSC-Fa and RSC-Fr are measured through satisfaction in relationships with family members and friends before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, respectively. This study employed descriptive statistics, cluster analysis, and multinomial logistic regression analysis.

The prevalence of teen smokers has increased during the Covid-19 pandemic. Smoking behavior occurs due to exposure to advertising and the promotion of cigarettes. This quantitative research was conducted using cross-sectional approach. The purpose of the study was to analyze the relationship between advertising exposure and cigarette promotion on adolescent smoking behavior in Malang Regency during the pandemic using the chi-square test. Random sampling on students from several high schools or equal degree in the Kepanjen District was done with a total of 145 respondents.

This paper aims to evaluate whether changes in lifestyle and eating habits resulting from the Covid-19 emergency have influenced the post-pandemic level of food neophobia and in children living in an Italian central region.  A sample of 99 children took part in a retrospective assessment carried out with a self-administrated questionnaire. Pre and post-pandemic evaluation of eating habits, physical activity, and lifestyle indicators was carried out. Food neophobia was evaluated following the Child Food Neophobia Scale (CFNS). Descriptive statistics were produced. A contingency analysis was performed to check associations between variables.

Parent perceived stress has been associated with child obesogenic eating, as parents who are stressed may be less responsive to their children during mealtimes (Gemmill et al., 2013). More recently, mindfulness-based interventions have successfully reduced people's stress levels. However, less is known regarding the role of mindfulness in the child feeding context. In this study, 249 parents of children between the ages of 3 and 12 completed a 20-minute online study to examine the associations among COVID-19 related parent stress (hereby referred to as parent stress), mindful feeding, and child obesogenic eating (i.e., food responsiveness, enjoyment of food, emotional overeating, and desire to drink).

The aim of this study was to analyze the relationship between Instagram, alcohol consumption and the impact on adolescent health during the COVID-19 pandemic. A qualitative study was carried out with 13 focus groups, involving 38 interviews. The fieldwork was conducted between January and December 2021 using a semi-structured script with three main categories. The research was carried out by a team specialized in adolescent risks and qualitative research.

The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns worldwide forced children and adolescents to change and adapt their lives to an unprecedented situation. Using an online survey, we investigated whether they showed changes in sleep quality and other related factors due to this event. Between February 21st, 2021 and April 19th, 2021, a total of 2,290 Austrian children and adolescents (6–18 years) reported their sleep habits and quality of sleep as well as physical activity, daylight exposure and usage of media devices during and, retrospectively, before the pandemic.

This study's objective is to review the consequence of the COVID-19 epidemic on physical activities, sedentary  lifestyles,  screen  time,  and  changes  in  the  nutritional  status  of  school-age  children.  The outcomes  of  this  study  are  intended  to  be  applicable  to  obesity  management  in  children.  This  study reviewed  full-text  articles  and  open-access  publications  on  the  sedentary  lifestyle  of  children  during the pandemic. and the data were analyzed using cohort, case-control, and cross-sectional designs. The results of reviewing 17 articles show that school-age children’s physical activities and nutritional status have  decreased,  but  their  sedentary  lifestyle  and  screen  time  have  increased  due  to  social  restrictions  during the COVID-19 pandemic. Children’s decreased physical activities are caused by the absence of a comparable replacement mechanism as that before the pandemic. Meanwhile, the increasingly sedentary  lifestyle highly influences children’s physical and mental health. Screen time has also increased and is unavoidable during the pandemic because children’s activities were limited and their learning systems are switched to online learning; as a result, their supporting sedentary lifestyle increases while physical activities decrease. These factors have changed the nutritional status of children during the pandemic.

Testing for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) decreased during the early months of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Less is known about the extent to which screening of asymptomatic adolescents for STIs was specifically affected. Our aim was to describe the impacts of early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic on asymptomatic STI screening and overall STI testing among adolescent females aged 13 to 19. We hypothesized that screening would decrease more than overall testing. This study evaluated claims data from a pediatric accountable care organization responsible for approximately 40,000 adolescent females. It assessed rates of asymptomatic screening and overall testing for chlamydia and gonorrhea in this population, comparing the early pandemic to pre-pandemic levels.

Psychosocial factors determining the use of psychoactive substances by adolescents have been identified in numerous empirical studies conducted over the past few decades. Specific features of the peer environment like contacts with substance users, prevalence of use in the peer environment or experiencing direct peer pressure towards substance use are indicated to be of particular importance. Features of the family environment, particularly parental support and control and features of the school environment like school bonding are important. Numerous studies have shown that the group of strongest factors include subjective norms and normative beliefs about use, expectations about the effects of alcohol and individual, temperamental and personality characteristics, such as sensation-seeking, impulsivity, self-control and sense of coherence. The Mokotów study presented in this paper, while primarily focused on monitoring changes in the prevalence of risk behaviours and other mental health problems also takes into account the possibility of analysing, as described above, the many strong determinants of various problems in the study population of adolescents.

This research examines the implementation of the Icelandic Prevention Model (IPM) in Canada to identify opportunities revealed by the COVID-19 pandemic to re-design our social eco-system to promote wellbeing. This paper has two objectives: 1) to provide a conceptual review of research that applies the bioecological model to youth substance use prevention with a focus on the concepts of time and physical space use and 2) to describe a case study that examines the implementation of the IPM in Canada within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Study data were collected through semi-structured qualitative interviews with key stakeholders involved in implementing the IPM.

In 2020, there seems to have been a global shift in lifestyle and eating habits with the emergence of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and the ensuing lockdowns implemented by national governments. This study assessed the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on SSBs consumption among healthy 6–11 years old children in Saudi Arabia; This is a mixed-methods study, incorporating a quantitative component, which was a validated Arabic online questionnaire completed by parents, and a qualitative component, involving structured interviews with 10 selected parents using a criterion sampling method.

As of 2017, American Indian/Alaska Natives (AI/AN) had the highest prevalence of illicit drug use of any ethnic group in the United States, with 17.6% of the population aged 12 and older reporting using illicit drugs in the last month. Studies have shown the positive correlation between a history of trauma and substance use disorder. In fact, the majority of youth in treatment for substance misuse reported a history of trauma. Intergenerational trauma, systematic discrimination, and displacement are downstream effects of colonization, and experiences of racism often define the life experiences of AI/ANs who use substances. This paper describes the process of designing a developmentally and culturally appropriate primary prevention supplement for an evidence-based program to prevent substance use and increase cultural identity among AI/AN youth.

It is important for creating a travel-friendly environment to consider old people and young children, who have many issues when traveling. In this study, the attitudes of mothers with infants and toddlers toward travel before and after the COVID-19 pandemic were analyzed using data from mamari, which is a smartphone application for mothers to solve and share questions and concerns about pregnancy, childbirth, and childcare. Latent Dirichlet allocation topic models were constructed for the data, which were user question sentences written in Japanese. Thus, the attitudes of mothers toward travel were investigated using the topic model analysis.