17 Tracking Studies: The Pandemic Did Not Ruin Child Development
Follow the same children over time and the pandemic produced only mild declines or stagnation, followed by recovery; blaming today's attention problems in kids entirely on the pandemic lacks evidence.
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Cross-sectional comparisons exaggerated learning loss
The NAEP data the mass media often cites compares a different group of fourth graders in 2019 with a different group in 2022 — the former never experienced the pandemic, the latter went through cumulative disruption. This kind of cross-cohort comparison naturally magnifies the gap. This special issue required all studies to track the same children: the same group before, during and after the pandemic. Once within-individual differences are controlled for, the pattern in academic skills is far milder, and signs of recovery appear — after children returned to in-person school, reading and math returned to or even exceeded pre-pandemic levels.
— Anna JohnsonOne third of parents say the pandemic's impact was neutral to positive
Based on parents' self-reports, the pandemic was not a universal disaster. Across different studies, roughly one third of parents considered COVID's impact on their lives neutral or even positive, including low-income families — and the narrative that low-income families were utterly devastated by the pandemic does not hold up. Parents are their children's buffer; if parents themselves did not feel it was that bad, their children's experience at home was not that bad either. This finding was replicated across multiple studies and may be one reason academic and mental health outcomes did not turn catastrophic.
— Anna JohnsonKids with existing substance-use trajectories were pushed deeper
The most consistent finding among risk factors: risk that existed before the pandemic predicted worse outcomes after it. A sample from a middle- to high-income US community showed that adolescent substance-use frequency during the pandemic was higher than before it, especially among kids who were already frequent users, and was exacerbated by factors such as household financial risk. This runs counter to the popular observation that "kids were stuck at home so substance use declined." But this is one of the few cases where a negative pattern was deepened; the larger theme remains that early risk predicts later risk — which has nothing to do with the pandemic and is an old conclusion from risk-and-resilience theory in developmental psychology.
— Anna JohnsonParent-child closeness did not drop — it became protective
Adolescence usually brings declining parent-child closeness and rising depressive symptoms. But a sample from mainland China found that during the pandemic parent-child closeness did not show this decline, possibly because social isolation shrank the community down to just the family. Adolescents' depressive symptoms rose during the acute phase, then fell back and recovered, with no cumulative increase. Parent-child closeness may have acted as a buffer. This is consistent with George Bonanno's research: even with fluctuations, people return to baseline — just as the happiness of lottery winners fades within a few months.
— Anna JohnsonReading runs on daily conversation; math is harder to teach at home
Reading and language development are socially mediated and happen largely in conversation early on. During the worst phase of the pandemic, conversation in the home continued, so school closures hit reading less than math. Math needs more structure and practice, and parents are more anxious about teaching math. Hence reading recovered faster and math more slowly, and math recovery depended more on socioeconomic status — the Ghana sample showed better math recovery in higher-income, better-resourced environments. But neither the math nor the reading pandemic effect is enough to explain the long-term decline in US test scores; that trend began before the pandemic.
— Anna JohnsonInfant biological aging was unaffected
One study measured infants using DNA methylation clocks: before the pandemic, during it, and 30 months after the acute phase, and found no trace of biological aging. In other words, the pandemic left no wear at the biological level in infants. This directly rebuts the claim that "today's kindergarten and first-grade kids can't sit still because they're pandemic babies" — the inability to sit still may be real, but the cause is most likely not the pandemic, at least this study shows the pandemic did not even affect biological mechanisms.
— Anna JohnsonGrade inflation hides real needs for support
An underrated mechanism: grades are inflating while test scores decline or flatline, and parents care more about the grades on the report card than about standardized tests. Tests are supposed to be diagnostic tools; districts usually have fall, mid-year and spring formative assessments to guide instruction. But if the report card looks good, many parents stop looking further. A child may actually need extra tutoring or support, yet no one knows test scores are falling, so no help arrives, and the problem only surfaces in later performance.
— Anna JohnsonParent-teacher conferences should put the data on the table
One concrete, actionable suggestion: restructure parent-teacher conferences. Almost every school has them, but they usually are not organized around data. Johnson's proposal is to bring out the data, look at it together with parents, and ask what questions they have. Of course some parents will say the child had just come back from a trip and hadn't slept well on test day — that is not accurate; but on average the data contains very useful information. Parents are their children's advocates and need to actively ask to see the information and have a collaborative, partner-like conversation with the teacher. Behind this is a larger problem: over the past 15 years the relationship between parents and teachers has grown increasingly adversarial, and teachers may be afraid to raise a child's problems for fear of being attacked by parents.
— Anna JohnsonIn their own words · checked verbatim
I feel like the top level finding is that it's very hard to fundamentally derail development, period.
Anna Johnson6:16
So if parents are saying it wasn't actually that bad, again, not all parents, but a bunch of parents, then it wasn't that bad for their kids in their home.
Anna Johnson8:16
Have they recovered completely? No. Is their sign of recovery more than their sign of catastrophic loss and devastation? 100% yes.
Anna Johnson9:17
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.
Anna Johnson27:04
It's unlikely that, you know, anything COVID related had catastrophic effects on child development on average, period, end of sense.
Anna Johnson28:07
I do not think there is any one single boogie man or boogie person. It's certainly not the pandemic.
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.
Anna Johnson44:48
Figures
| Number of studies in the special issue | 17 longitudinal studies | 4:13 |
| Number of letters of intent submitted | More than 130 | 4:13 |
| Share of low-income parents who saw the pandemic's impact as neutral to positive | 33% | 19:48 |
| Age at which infant biological aging was measured | 30 months | 27:04 |
| Time span over which parent-teacher relations deteriorated | The past 15 years | 35:28 |
| When US test scores began to decline | Around 2010 | 44:48 |
Glossary
- longitudinal studies
- Research that tracks the same group of people over time, as distinct from cross-sectional comparisons of different cohorts.
- NAEP
- The US National Assessment of Educational Progress, a standardized test given to fourth and eighth graders every two years, often cited as evidence of learning loss.
- DNA methylation clocks
- Measures that estimate biological age from DNA methylation levels, used to gauge physiological wear.
- executive functioning
- Cognitive abilities such as attention, persistence and inhibitory control, related to classroom performance.
- internalizing / externalizing behavior
- Internalizing refers to inward problems such as worry and sadness; externalizing refers to outward problems such as aggression and rule-breaking.
How to listen
Parents, teachers and policy researchers focused on child development and education policy; and general readers who want to understand how "pandemic narratives" get amplified by the media.
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