Left out of the conversation: Teenagers and Covid-19 - Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

In this episode we speak to Professor Sarah-Jane Blakemore from the Department of Psychology, about the adolescent brain and the return to school.

We think about the effects of social isolation on teenagers, the long term impact of Covid-19 and we ask if we are doing the right thing by having students return to university during a pandemic.

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore is Professor of Psychology and leader of the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Group. Her group's research focuses on the development of social cognition and decision-making in the human adolescent brain, and adolescent mental health, running behavioural studies in schools and in the lab, and neuroimaging studies, with adolescents and adults.

More Information:

https://sites.google.com/site/blakemorelab/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/sjblakemore

Transcript

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Speaker 1

0:00

Hello, and welcome to the university. I'm your host, Nick Saffell. In this episode, we speak just Professor Sarah Jane Blakemore, from the Department of Psychology, about the adolescent brain and the return to school, we think about the effects of social isolation on teenagers, the long term impact of COVID-19. And we asked if we are doing the right thing by having students returned to university during a pandemic. We all know that the return to school is looking different this year, from a teenager's point of view, what are some of the biggest differences. So some might be that things are missing, but some might be real pluses.

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Speaker 2

0:37

Cool is very different. It has a lot of young people that are limited to one or a very small number of classrooms for that essence, to try to minimize movement around the school. There are one way systems they the shedule of the day has changed. Of course, there is isolation, if they get a any of the symptoms of covid. And those symptoms are not, you know, completely unambiguous. So if children are getting colds, often families or schools are worried that they might have covid. So that means they have to stay off school until they get it anyway, it's very, very disrupted education. And I mean, I don't have any good solutions to this, I think schools are, are kind of firefighting in a very, very difficult circumstances. And actually, the schools that I know of are mostly doing a really great job in tough circumstances where there's a lot of worry around, and anxiety. But ultimately, the school teachers head teachers really care about educating the young people there. I mean, young people are, you know, can be quite resilient and adaptive. So, young people I have spoken to my own children, their friends, young people I work with, seem to be coping quite well, with with school with going back to school, what I think they found particularly difficult was locked out and not being in school for so many months, many teenagers were not in school for a period of six months when they should have been. And that really is difficult, not only because of the lack of learning, of education of education, academic subjects, but also because of the lack of social interaction and routine and structure that school provides that I think, is what young people that I know, found particularly challenging. Do you think teenagers are sort of taking it in their stride, then I think there are a huge, huge individual differences, some teenagers seem to be coping really well. Others have really suffered over the last few months, partly because of the lack of social interaction face to face social interaction, in the constant changes of rules with regard to social interaction, and also anxiety, anxiety about the virus about family members getting the virus that has affected young people in many different ways. And some, some are more resilient to it than others, just just as adults,

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Speaker 1

3:02

we're hearing a lot about the sort of behavior of young people respect to the spreading of COVID-19. And how that affects older generations. It's almost as if generations of being set up in opposition to each other. Well, that's sort of the way it talks about at least in the UK. Now, is there really anything different about the behavior of adolescents compared to other generations? Not with respect to like the spreading of the virus, but more generally, you know, what's sort of special about the, you know, the teenage, adolescent brain?

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Speaker 2

3:32

I mean, you're you just ask the most enormous questions. Sorry, I didn't start by saying that. I really find it sad and distressing, this kind of us versus them, blame culture where young people have been blamed for just doing what they naturally need to do go out and socialize, meet other people affiliate with their peers, meet romantic partners. They're just doing what teenagers and adolescents young people have always done. And that and they're being you know, in the media, and by politicians, they're being blamed for this natural behavior. And it really is creating a sort of polarization between younger people and older people. I think that's absolutely the wrong way to go about this. And there is a lot of evidence that the best way to encourage positive behaviors, for example, health behaviors, in young people is to educate them about the harmful effects of unhealthy behaviors, let's say, and then encourage them and incentivize them to create their own campaigns where they can educate each other about why it's a good idea, for example, to social socially distance from each other in this case, it's really, there is no evidence that adults lecturing and blaming. Young people will have any positive effect on young people's behavior. In fact, it might be counterproductive. So you also asked about how the brain and behavior is different in young people in an adult? And that really is a big question. And the answer is that both behavior and the brain are undergoing huge amounts of development in adolescence. And there are behaviors that are really quite different in adolescents. Of course, one caveat here is that not all adolescents are the same. There are huge individual differences. Some adolescents show take teenage typical behaviors, whereas others don't. That's the kind of proviso but um, so in terms of behavior, we know that behaviors like risk taking and sensation seeking are heightened in adolescence, we also know that those kinds of behaviors like risk taking behaviors are most likely to occur when teenagers are with their friends. So that propensity to take risks, when you're with your friends is heightened in adolescence compared with in other age groups. And this is because adolescents are particularly susceptible to peer influence. And that's probably for perfectly conferred adaptive reasons, like adolescents need to affiliate with their peers, work out where they are in the social hierarchy become part of a peer group that's really important process, as adolescents are becoming, or in their journey towards becoming an independent adult. So that they're just a few examples of behaviors that seem to seem to be different in adolescents compared with adults, in terms of the brain. The brain is undergoing very substantial and protracted development during adolescence in all sorts of ways, both in terms of its structure and its function. And we used to think 25 years ago that the brain stops developing in childhood, we now know that that's absolutely not true. We know this, because we're able to scan the living human brain using MRI scanning. And studies that have used MRI scans, to to track changes in the child and adolescent brain, as children and adolescents grow up have shown that, in fact, the brain continues to develop right throughout childhood, and throughout adolescence, and even into the 20s and early 30s.

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Speaker 1

7:21

Sorry, for the huge question I'll make this one is a slightly shorter one. So what are we sort of hearing from teenagers right now? You know, one of the biggest things in their lives is obviously school. But as they return to institutions, sort of what are we hearing? What are the sort of channels for their voices to be heard on this sort of unusual return to school?

7:42

Is your question about adolescents being involved in decision making? And

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Speaker 1

7:47

yeah, I think so it's, where is their voice in this part of the conversation?

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Speaker 2

7:52

Where is their voice? You know, where it's such a shame and such a lost opportunity, not to include young people in these policy decisions, that the policy decisions affect them? They should really have a say in what the in what the policies are? I mean, of course, they shouldn't have the only say, because they might not have information that no scientists and and policy makers have, but they should have some say and yes, I mean, the evidence suggests that when adolescents do have a say, when they have a say, in creating campaigns, for example, those campaigns work more efficiently than campaigns that are just led by adults.

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Speaker 1

8:36

In terms of public health guidelines, you know, should that be sort of guide? You know, the guidelines are sort of put out regardless of age, do you think teenagers should be given a different set of guidelines sort of set, you know, now that we know that science sort of tells us that different age groups behave differently?

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Speaker 2

8:54

So Young, we know that the social needs of young people are different from the social needs of adults, we know that, for example, let's just take adolescence because that's the that's the period of development that I I've been working on for the last 18 years. And we know that adolescence is a kind of sensitive period of social development, the social brain is undergoing huge amounts of change, as is