A Tale of Two Studies

I was confronted yesterday with the ubiquitous claim, "Lockdowns destroyed kid's ability to socialize. Now they're committing suicide because of it!!" Let's have a closer look again:

I posted this mini-thread a couple weeks ago that helps to understand the role media plays in propping up this claim:

"A tale of two studies: One study (October 2024 in School Psychology), picked up by the Toronto Star, gauged classroom incivility from anecdotal reports by teachers pre- and post-covid (handy they had data form Fall 2019) to conclude that lockdowns for three months in 2020 destroyed kids' socialization skills in 2022. The other study (October 2024 in an international medical journal), NOT picked up by the Star, assessed kids pre- and post-INFECTION, and against a control to find, 'more severe symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity-impulsivity, opposition, a wide range of emotional and behavioural problems, and poor school function.' Many studies have shown that SARS-CoV-2 affects the prefrontal cortex, which affects behaviour. Until mainstream media starts reporting on better studies, our children will suffer. A timeline of some studies on Covid's effects on the brain are here." 

Claims that doing school online, for a length of time slightly longer than summer break, almost five years ago is causing the problems in kids today beggars belief. Not only does it ignore the very real cognitive effects from this virus that continues to circulate freely (based on wastewater data, 1 in 28 in Ontario is likely infected right this minute), but it ignores all the others things that have happened in the last decade. 

The original speaker noted that a few kids in his local university had committed suicide recently, but, although American, he didn't seem to think it could have anything to do with the political climate that has some people very scared of deportation, for instance, which could have dramatic effects on international students, many of whose families spent a fortune to get them this far. 

The claim misses that even without Long Covid, kids are having to cope with getting significantly ill several times each year. 

It misses that, even if the kids are perfectly healthy, many of them have watched others get very sick. Instead of kids losing grandparents, which is common, they're losing parents and siblings, which used to be very rare. That takes a toll. 

It misses that, for kids trying to stay healthy, or trying to avoid another infection, it is increasingly difficult to stand up to a mocking crowd. 

It misses that kids' socialization changed dramatically over the last few decades due to a mix of technology and helicopter parenting. Well before the lockdown, I had discussions with several classes about nobody going out to parties or hanging out in person anymore. A lot of kids played online long before they had to. They don't know how to just hang out. I tried to get a class to organize a game of Manhunt in the park: just text everyone to meet at 7 pm, then get a game going and include whoever shows up. Nobody would do that. It's too scary to talk to people you don't know. They don't have the skills to say, "Okay, here are the parameters of play; the three of us are the fugitives; give us 5 minutes, then the rest of you come find us!" They wanted a teacher to come organize it for them and stick around to make sure everyone's safe and gets home okay. They needed to be led. The loose kid-organized play of my youth is disappearing. A mom was recently arrested for letting her 10-year-old son walk alone less than a mile from home. Our entire culture is coddling children, wary of letting them explore and discover on their own.  

It misses that the culture also changed dramatically when Trump was first elected and publicly used vile and antagonistic language and gestures that permeated classrooms. Suddenly I was having to quash racist, ableist, and sexist terms. Most recently, schools have to deal with boys yelling, "Your body, my choice," to girls on the playground.  

It also misses that we can't generalize conclusions from local data. Here are recent suicide rates in Canada:

Suicides tend to cluster. When one person in a school goes, others follow, so it's not necessarily indicative of a national phenomenon. 

I'm so fucking BORED of this pronouncements that lockdowns are the cause of everything. Save the kids by letting this bullshit claim die.