17 Tracking Studies: The Pandemic Did Not Ruin a Generation of Children
Following the same children over time, academics stalled briefly and then rebounded — not permanent learning loss. The research does not support pinning today's attention problems on the pandemic.
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The 17 studies only took those tracking the same children
These papers come from a special issue of Child Development. After the three editors sent out a call for submissions, they received more than 130 letters of intent, and after peer review they ultimately accepted 17 papers. The key is the inclusion threshold: every study had to track the same children, measuring the same group before, during and after the pandemic. This directly targets the previously popular practice of comparing fourth graders in 2019 with fourth graders in 2022 and concluding "learning loss." Johnson says that kind of cross-cohort comparison is the main source of the "learning loss" narrative in popular news.
— Dr. Anna JohnsonA third of parents say the pandemic's impact was neutral or positive
The first counterintuitive number Johnson gives: depending on the study, about a third of parents rated the pandemic's impact on their lives as neutral to positive, including low-income families — even though the narrative that low-income families were "necessarily destroyed" has been very popular. She treats this as a key mechanism explaining downstream outcomes: parents are the child's buffer layer, and if parents themselves did not experience this disruption as a catastrophe, the child's experience at home was also less bad. She specifically mentions one sample in which 33% of low-income parents, mostly non-white, reported a neutral-to-positive impact.
— Dr. Anna JohnsonReading and math stalled, they did not suffer loss
Once you track the same children, the academic picture is much milder: there was a decline, but recovery signs followed, with some returning to or even exceeding pre-pandemic levels. Johnson gives the example of a large public school district — children who experienced kindergarten closures were reading at the same level by second grade as same-grade children who never experienced the pandemic; the Uruguay sample also showed that early gaps in reading, math and school readiness narrowed substantially by third grade. Her own phrasing is "stagnation loss and then recovery," not learning loss.
— Dr. Anna JohnsonReading was saved by family conversation, math was not
Why was math hit harder than reading? The mechanism Johnson gives: language and literacy development is socially mediated, and early on it happens largely in everyday conversation. Even if schools closed, talking at home continued, so reading was less affected by school closures and recovered faster. Math is different — it needs more structure and practice, and parents themselves are anxious about math, making it harder to teach math at home. From this she frames the parent's role as a buffer: not through parenting techniques, but through everyday verbal interaction.
— Dr. Anna JohnsonInfants' biological aging clocks did not change
Among these studies is one project that used DNA methylation clocks to measure infants' biological aging: measured before and during the pandemic, then measured again at 30 months old, it found no effect of the pandemic on infants' biological aging. Johnson uses it to directly rebut the claim that "today's kindergarten and first-grade children can't sit still because they are pandemic babies" — the inability to sit still may be real, but at least this one study shows the pandemic did not even move the biological mechanism. She also mentions that an Early Head Start study found the smaller class sizes brought by the pandemic may actually have been a protective factor.
— Dr. Anna JohnsonWhat is really holding children back is screens and social media
Johnson says explicitly that attributing today's children's classroom performance to the pandemic is a misattribution. The real suspects she lists are: social media, the Chromebooks left in classrooms after learning moved online, and the deepened social isolation after the pandemic. Her description is concrete — when everything is gamified, when there is a screen in front of the child, and when the teacher still says "everyone open your tablet and do the math game," that is probably not the only way children should be learning. These factors began before the pandemic, worsened during it, and did affect children's attention.
— Dr. Anna JohnsonGrade inflation made parents take their foot off the gas
Johnson offers another underrated mechanism: grades are inflating, standardized test scores are flat or falling, and parents care more about the letter on the report card than about test scores. Test scores are meant to be diagnostic — districts give formative assessments three times a school year precisely to guide instruction — but parents do not look at them much. If the grade looks good, parents stop looking further down, so the tutoring and support the child actually needs is never pursued, and the problem only surfaces later as worse grades. She calls this "parents taking their foot off the gas."
— Dr. Anna JohnsonTeachers dare not tell the truth because parents will come and fight
Johnson connects grade inflation to the deterioration of home-school relations: over the past 15 years, the relationship between parents and teachers has become more adversarial, videos of parents yelling at school board meetings circulate online, and the signal sent is "I don't trust you." Her inference is that this makes teachers more inclined to say "your child is doing fine," because they do not want to deal with the ensuing conflict. The consequence is a two-way information cutoff — if teachers dare not say the child is difficult to get along with at school or always plays alone, parents never get that information and cannot act on it. She stresses this is not about blaming parents, but about the need to rebuild communication.
— Dr. Anna JohnsonIn their own words · checked verbatim
So this was like a, okay, five years after that, what do we know? You know, are the things that we saw that were very alarming or the things that we just kind of hypothesized would be alarming? Are they true? Are they still there? Have they gotten worse? Have they gotten better?
Dr. Anna Johnson5:16
I feel like the top level finding is that it's very hard to fundamentally derail development, period.
Dr. Elisa Pressman6:16
Have they recovered completely? No. Is their sign of recovery more than their sign of catastrophic loss and devastation? 100% yes.
Dr. Elisa Pressman9:17
What do you think this once in a lifetime pandemic did? You would say bad things. And I'm here to tell you the bottom line is that's not the conclusion. That's just not right.
Dr. Anna Johnson26:00
They may not be able to sit still, but it's probably not because they were pandemic babies, because at least this one study we have suggests the pandemic didn't even affect like biological mechanisms.
Dr. Anna Johnson27:04
I do not think there is any one single boogie man or boogie person. It's certainly not the pandemic.
Dr. Anna Johnson39:35
When you follow the same kids over time, it's either a little dip or a flattening. So like I would call it stagnation loss and then recovery.
Dr. Anna Johnson44:48
Figures
| Number of letters of intent received for the special issue call | More than 130 | 4:13 |
| Number of tracking studies ultimately accepted | 17 | 4:13 |
| Share of parents rating the pandemic's impact on their lives as neutral to positive | About one third | 7:16 |
| Share of low-income parents in one sample reporting a neutral-to-positive impact | 33% | 19:48 |
| Age in months at the follow-up measurement of infant biological aging | 30 months old | 27:04 |
| Time span over which home-school relations deteriorated | The past 15 years | 35:28 |
Glossary
- longitudinal studies
- A study design that repeatedly measures the same group of people rather than comparing different groups.
- learning loss
- A phrase common in popular news referring to permanent academic regression caused by the pandemic.
- NAEP
- A standardized test administered every few years to fourth- and eighth-grade public school students.
- DNA methylation clocks
- A measure that estimates biological age through methylation patterns.
- formative assessments
- Diagnostic tests administered multiple times during the school year to guide instruction.
- internalizing / externalizing behavior
- Internalizing refers to inward symptoms such as worry and sadness; externalizing refers to outward behaviors such as aggression and tantrums.
How to listen
Parents of school-age children, founders building education products or investing in K-12 education, and anyone who needs to judge whether the "pandemic generation" narrative is true.
Two mid-episode ad breaks (roughly 12:20-14:24 and 31:19-33:26) can be skipped.