A new study found that teenagers' brains aged faster than usual during the lockdowns instituted during the COVID pandemic.

"Once the pandemic was underway, we started to think about which brain measures would allow us to estimate what the pandemic lockdown had done to the brain," said Neva Corrigan, lead author and research scientist at UW Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS). "What did it mean for our teens to be at home rather than in their social groups — not at school, not playing sports, not hanging out?"

The researchers examined the brains of 160 teens between the ages of 9 and 17, who were part of a different study on how the brain changes during adolescence. The study, which began in 2018 but was not finished due to the pandemic, gave the researchers the opportunity to compare the teens' brains before and after the pandemic.

They found that, on average, the brains of the females aged 4.2 years faster than normal, while the males' brains aged by approximately 1.4 years. In female brains, the advanced aging was seen in thirty different regions, compared to just two regions in the males' brains that were affected.

The researchers suggested that chronic stress from the lockdowns played a role in why the teens' brains aged faster than expected.

"Teenagers really are walking a tightrope, trying to get their lives together," said Patricia Kuhl, senior author and co-director of I-LABS. "They're under tremendous pressure. Then a global pandemic strikes, and their normal channels of stress release are gone. Those release outlets aren't there anymore, but the social criticisms and pressures remain because of social media. What the pandemic really seems to have done is to isolate girls. All teenagers got isolated, but girls suffered more. It affected their brains much more dramatically."

Vicki McKenna