Is there no end to these speculative studies?
"Brains of post-pandemic teens show signs of faster ageing, study finds"
'Ageing' here could as easily be read as 'maturing', perhaps what you'd expect in teens who live through societal challenges.
Brain imaging studies are often ambiguous, underpowered & peculiar to a specific time/place. This study, focusing on a target group of 64 Californian 16-year-olds, tells us very little of substance.
@b_m_hughes just read this paper. They didn’t even consider whether Covid infection , rather than “the pandemic” might have been a factor. How is this even publishable?
@b_m_hughes Youths' development will be influenced by the developmental tasks at hand. This differs from generation to generation and of course it will differ in a crisis. And a sample of 64 youths is by far too small to infer anything. Especially since reliability is not a forte of brain imaging.
I remember similar claims but in the opposite direction (immaturity) some years ago, that were not supported by longitudinal studies on adjustment.