Science Mama

                          

He hid under the table, shaking, crying for us to leave. My son, five years old at the time, was having his first playdate after a year of quarantine. His tiny hands gripped the wooden legs as he buried his flushed face into the carpet. This wasn’t his first time being around a child since the pandemic. He was still in school and after-school programs. But this was the first time that there was no six-feet, masking, and distancing. That is to say, the first return to a normal social setting. I soon realized that there would be no return to normal.

 “We are seeing a lot of these cases now,” our newly hired child therapist reassured me, “post-pandemic social anxiety.” Her words echoed in my mind. The pandemic has taken away so much from all of us. Jobs, health, stability. But it also took something critical from our children: their social connections. Schools closed. Extra-curricular activities shut down. Time with family and friends became sporadic and rare.

As humans, we are primed for constant connection with others. Our species evolved and advanced solely due to our ability to depend on and work together. The part of our brain responsible for socialization, the prefrontal cortex, is the last part of the brain to develop and doesn’t fully mature until age twenty-five. Until then, those neural pathways are still developing. In fact, a research team at the University of Oxford has shown that individuals with more social connections have larger prefrontal cortexes. For children and adolescence, this critical period of social development has been hindered by a deadly virus circulating the globe. To keep our families and ourselves safe, we’ve distanced ourselves from the outside world. Our past two years have been a series of opening up and closing down. As we close down, our interactions with family and friends come to a screeching halt. The social brain shuts down as well. For millions of years, our brains have thrived from daily community connections. Oxytocin floods the body with a warm embrace. Allostasis, which is the body’s ability to regain normalcy after stress, relies upon social connections for resilience. So, what happens then, when an entire generation of children begin to lose out on this critical part of daily life? What happens to the developing brain?

            Some studies have shown that reducing frequency of contact with other people can cause shrinkage of brain structures. A team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute found an expedition team in the Antarctic that experienced social isolation experienced a 7% shrinkage of the dentate gyruses, a brain region associated with learning and memory. Other studies have found similar effects in overall white matter, allowing different brain regions to communicate. 

It isn’t only the brain that is affected, though. Studies have shown an increase in C-reactive protein (an inflammatory biomarker), both acute and long-term. Systematic inflammation is particularly dangerous in children as it can hinder neurodevelopmental growth. Loneliness has also been correlated with a decrease in immune response. Not the greatest corollary during a pandemic.

 Our brains aren’t only wired to connect; they are dependent upon it. Jamie Cain, a licensed social worker, specializing in past traumatic experiences, explains this idea to me.  “Kids evolved to live in societies or part of groups because it was necessary for survival. We still have that innate sense in our nervous system. We still need to be protected and cared for. Our nervous system still thinks of it in the same way. So, we still react that way. We still need that connection.” Recent studies that have come out post-pandemic have shown that more children are suffering from mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression as a result of social isolation. A recent meta-literature review published in JAMA Pediatrics found that since the onset of the pandemic, depression and anxiety rates in children were up 25% and 20%, respectively. Though there are many contributors to mental health decline in children, researchers found that children who experienced the most social isolation typically experienced a significant decline in mental health. We’ve long known that social isolation during childhood increases your risk for depression in life. The pandemic is a running experiment to discover other developmental delays brought forth by limited social ties.

Most parents I talk to have some degree of ambivalence about the issue.  We aren’t open to jeopardizing anyone’s health— but that comes at the cost of social interactions. With children under twelve still not approved for the Covid vaccine, many of us are at a stand-still. After six months of therapy, my son no longer hides under furniture. This week he actually took the initiative to invite our neighbor for a good old-fashion scoot around the neighborhood. Progress. Jaimie reminds me that the brain isn’t ever permanently hard-wired. It’s like soft plastic—constantly ebbing and changing with new experiences. As parents, there isn’t much we can do to change the current circumstances except lean in and remind our kids that we’re here. “Trauma comes from a sense of powerlessness,” Jaimie adds. “In the long run, the most resilient kids will be the ones who had someone staying engaged and attuned.”

           

List of Sources

• Powell, Joanne et al. “Orbital prefrontal cortex volume predicts social network size: an imaging study of individual differences in humans.” Proceedings. Biological sciences vol. 279,1736 (2012): 2157-62. doi:10.1098/rspb.2011.257

• Racine Nicole et al. “Global Prevalence of Depressive and Anxiety Symptoms in Children and Adolescents During COVID-19: A Meta-analysis.” JAMA Pediatr. Published online August 09, 2021. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2021.2482

• Stahn, A. C. et al. Brain changes in response to long antarctic expeditions. N. Engl. J. Med. 381, 2273–2275 (2019).