The purpose of this study was to determine whether restrictions put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic affected the social and psychological well-being of early adolescent schoolchildren. Participants were 309 youth (51% female, average age = 12.38 years) enrolled in the sixth, seventh, or eighth grades of a single middle school located in northeastern Pennsylvania, a state that took a moderately proactive approach to the pandemic. Employing a cross-sectional design, students in three instructional conditions (100% in-person, hybrid, 100% online) were compared on nine outcome measures (perceived parental support, perceived parental knowledge, peer deviance, neutralization, cognitive impulsivity, depression, delinquency, bullying victimization, and bullying perpetration). There were no significant between-groups differences, although there was a borderline significant effect for depression (100% online >100% in-person, p = .06). A second set of analyses employed a longitudinal design and compared 174 children who completed the test battery in November 2019, 3 months before the start of the pandemic, and then again in November 2020, 9 months after the start of the pandemic. Three out of nine outcomes displayed significant change: A small reduction in parental support and modest increments in neutralization beliefs and cognitive impulsivity. Although there were no statistically significant differences between the three instructional conditions and only a handful of relatively small and predictable longitudinal changes between November 2019 and November 2020, there were a fair number of individual students who experienced moderate (≥50%) increases in depression (17.6%), cognitive impulsivity (15.8%), and bullying victimization (11.7%).
Impact and ImplicationsThe psychological consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic were evaluated in early adolescents enrolled in a single Pennsylvania middle school. Results showed that instructional condition (100% inperson, hybrid, 100% online) had no bearing on a child's level of depression, peer deviance, perceived parental support and control, bullying perpetration and victimization, delinquency, and delinquencyrelated thinking. There were also very few changes on these outcome measures from before the pandemic to 9 months into the pandemic except for a rise in the tendency to think and act impulsively.