Children Born During COVID Pandemic Appear to Have Lower IQs, Stunted Neurodevelopment

Children Born During COVID Pandemic Appear to Have Lower IQs, Stunted Neurodevelopment – Big League Politics

 

A study has found that children born during the COVID pandemic have “significantly reduced verbal, motor, and overall cognitive performance compared to children born pre-pandemic.”

Titled “Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Early Child Cognitive Development: Initial Findings in a Longitudinal Observational Study of Child Health,” the study was conducted by researchers affiliated with Brown University, an Ivy League institution located in Providence, Rhode Island. They examined the cognitive scores of children in 2020 and 2021 and compared them to those of 2011-2019.

The study, still pending peer review, collected data on 672 children in Rhode Island, all of whom are “healthy, full-term, and neurotypically-developing children” between three months and three years of age. The dataset included 154 cognitive assessments from 118 children between March 2020 and June 2021.

“Results highlight that even in the absence of direct SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 illness, the environmental changes associated [with the] COVID-19 pandemic [are] significantly and negatively affecting infant and child development,” the researchers wrote.

It thus appears—and is consonant with common sense—that limited opportunities to play and interact with other children has reduced stimulation and educational opportunity, both of which are critical to proper neurodevelopment. The research found that males and children born in lower socioeconomic environments have been most negatively affected.

Big League Politics recently reported on another study which concluded that elderly people felt even more isolated and lonely after participating in Zoom and Skype calls than those who had no outside interaction with others:

The report, published in the Frontiers in Sociology journal, has shown that many elderly people developed long-term mental health disorders and reported increases in loneliness from communicating through technology. They reported worse isolation than elderly people who endured the pandemic completely alone.

“We were surprised by the finding that an older person who had only virtual contact during lockdown experienced greater loneliness and negative mental health impacts than an older person who had no contact with other people at all,” said Dr. Yang Hu of Lancaster University, who co-wrote the report.

The collective damage we seem to have inflicted on our society is incalculable. Idiocracy will only get worse from here.

 

 

 

Ten to fifteen years from now, what will this mean for our society?