Background: The goal of the current study was to characterize the impact of COVID-19 mitigation efforts (i.e., stay-at-home orders) on children’s mental health and parenting quality, as well as to assess predictors of children’s mental health during the pandemic. Methods: Seventy-nine children (18 with autism, 61 without) and their parents who participated in a previous study and were at least 10 years old (M = 13.8, SD = 1.7) were invited to participate in three online follow-up surveys post initiation of the stay-at-home-order (during May through November 2020). Children were predominantly White (49.4%) and not Hispanic or Latino (78.5%). Parents reported on children’s anxiety and depressive symptoms, as well as their own parenting practices. Family togetherness, conflict, financial problems, and parental mental health during the pandemic were also collected. Results: Children without autism experienced a significant decrease in anxiety symptoms across the beginning of the pandemic and a significant increase in depressive symptoms from pre- to post-stay-at-home-order. Children with autism experienced a significant decrease in depressive symptoms from pre- to post- stay-at-home-order. Parents of children without autism reported a significant decrease in positive parenting from pre- to post stay-at-home-order. Higher levels of permissive parenting and financial problems were associated with children’s depressive symptoms. Higher levels of parent mental health difficulties and permissive parenting were associated with higher levels of children’s anxiety symptoms. Conclusions: Children are experiencing both improvements and declines in mental health relative to pre-pandemic. Parenting quality and parental mental health have direct impacts on children’s functioning during the pandemic.
Neural reward network sensitivity in youth is proposed to differentially impact the effects of social environments on social outcomes. The COVID‐19 pandemic provided an opportunity to test this hypothesis within a context of diminished in‐person social interaction. We examined whether neural sensitivity to interactive social reward moderates the relationship between a frequency of interactive or passive social activity and social satisfaction. Survey reports of frequency of interactions with friends, passive social media use, and loneliness and social satisfaction were gathered in 2020 during mandated precautions limiting in‐person contact. A subset of participants (age = 10–17) previously participated in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study examining social‐interactive reward during a simulated peer interaction (survey n = 76; survey + fMRI n = 40). We found evidence of differential response to social context, such that youth with higher neural reward sensitivity showed a negative association between a frequency of interactive connections with friends and a combined loneliness and social dissatisfaction component (LSDC) score, whereas those with lower sensitivity showed the opposite effect. Further, high reward sensitivity was associated with greater LSDC as passive social media use increased, whereas low reward sensitivity showed the opposite. This indicates that youth with greater sensitivity to social‐interactive reward may be more susceptible to negative effects of infrequent contact than their low reward‐sensitive counterparts, who instead maintain social well‐being through passive viewing of social content. These differential outcomes could have implications for supporting youth during times of major social disruption as well as ensuring mental health and well‐being more broadly.
Neural reward network sensitivity in adolescence is proposed to differentially impact the effects of social environments on social outcomes. The COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity to test this hypothesis within a context of diminished in-person social interaction. We examined whether neural sensitivity to interactive social reward moderates the relationship between frequency of interactive or passive social activity and social satisfaction. Survey reports of frequency of interactions with friends, non-interactive social media use, feelings of social needs being met, and loneliness were gathered in 2020 during mandated precautions limiting in-person contact. A subset of participants previously participated in an fMRI study examining social interactive reward during a simulated peer interaction (Survey n = 76; Survey + fMRI n = 40). We found evidence of differential response to social context, such that adolescents with higher neural reward sensitivity had a strong positive association between frequency of interactive connections with friends and social needs met, while those with lower sensitivity showed no effect. Further, high reward sensitive adolescents reported higher levels of loneliness with increasing social media use, whereas low reward sensitive adolescents reported the opposite with the same behaviors. This indicates that youth with greater sensitivity to social interactive reward are more susceptible to negative effects of infrequent contact, whereas low reward sensitive adolescents are less susceptible and instead maintain social well-being through passive viewing of social content. These differential outcomes have implications for supporting youth during times of major social disruption as well as ensuring mental health and well-being more broadly.
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