Adolescent Psychosocial Adjustment during COVID-19: An Intensive Longitudinal Study

ABSTRACT

Objective

COVID-19 has presented threats to adolescents’ psychosocial well-being, especially for those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. This longitudinal study aimed to identify which social (i.e., family conflict, parental social support, peer social support), emotional (i.e., COVID-19 health-related stress), and physical (i.e., sleep quality, food security) factors influence adolescents’ same- and next-day affect and misconduct and whether these factors functioned differently by adolescents’ economic status.

Method

Daily-diary approaches were used to collect 12,033 assessments over 29 days from a nationwide sample of American adolescents (n =546; M_age = 15.0; 40% male; 43% Black, 37% White, 10% Latinx, 8% Asian American, and 3% Native American; 61% low-income) at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Results

Peer support, parent support, and sleep quality operated as promotive factors, whereas parent-child conflict and COVID-19 health-related stress operated as risk factors. Although these links were consistent for adolescents irrespective of economic status, low-income adolescents experienced more conflict with parents, more COVID-19 health-related stress, less peer support, and lower sleep quality than higher-income adolescents. Food insecurity was connected to decreased same- and next-day negative affect for low-income adolescents only. Low-income adolescents also displayed greater negative affect in response to increased daily health-related stress relative to higher-income adolescents.

Conclusion

These results highlight the role of proximal processes in shaping adolescent adjustment and delineate key factors influencing youth psychosocial well-being in the context of COVID-19. By understanding adolescents’ responses to stressors at the onset of the pandemic, practitioners and healthcare providers can make evidence-based decisions regarding clinical treatment and intervention planning for youth most at risk for developmental maladjustment.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

D ata Av ailability S tate ment/Data Deposition

The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available, but they are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Note: *Henry, Scanlon, and Del Toro made equal intellectual contribution to the manuscript so they share the second-authorship

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF 1561382) and Spencer Foundation (54375) to the first author (Wang).