A new study claims teens are faring better during the pandemic because they’re getting more sleep and family time.
While the coronavirus pandemic has resulted in declining mental health for many adults, teenagers, particularly those in two-parent households, have been faring better thanks to more sleep and spending more time with their families, according to a new report.
The report cites data from a survey of 1,523 U.S. teenagers during May–July. The survey asked about their mental health, family time, sleep, technology use, and views on race-related protests and the police. The data from the survey was then measured against responses from teenagers to identical questions from the 2018 administration of the national Monitoring the Future survey.
The researchers wrote in the report — “To our surprise, we found that teens fared relatively well during quarantine. Depression and loneliness were actually lower among teens in 2020 than in 2018, and unhappiness and dissatisfaction with life were only slightly higher.”
In 2018, only 55% of teenagers reported sleeping seven or more hours a night. During the pandemic, however, some 84% of teenagers who were still attending school said they were getting seven or more hours of sleep.
With more parents working from home and the cancelation of many outside activities, more than half of the teenagers in the study reported spending more time with their family than before the pandemic.