Children’s changing social networks during COVID-19

• In Event: Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Topic - Solicited Content: COVID-19 Related

Abstract

COVID-19 has caused major disruption to everyday life. Before the pandemic, children’s social networks were complex and full – they went to school, library story hour, soccer practice, and they went to neighborhood potlucks with their families (Burke et al., in prep). The onset of COVID-19 has required drastic changes to the number of people children see on a regular basis; while some aspects of their social world have been translated to virtual formats other aspects of social interaction do not translate as easily, especially for young children. The present study set-out to explore: how do children’s social networks change as a result of COVID-19 and do changes in their social network mediate COVID-related stress? This study will also explore parent social support networks and explore whether changes in parents’ social networks mediate their children’s stress.
Data collection is ongoing (ages 6-60 months). Parents are asked to complete a battery of measures for themselves and for their child online. The child measures include 1) child’s social network before COVID-19, 2) their child’s social network during COVID-19, and 3) a questionnaire about their child’s COVID-related stress. The parent measures are 1) parent’s social support networks before COVID-19, 2) parent’s social support networks during COVID-19, and 3) a questionnaire about their social isolation. We have processed and analyzed children’s social networks before and during COVID-19 for our current sample (n = 55; Mage = 30.6 months, range: 6.4 – 59.1 months) and have assessed the following for each child: social network size before COVID-19, social network size during COVID-19, and change in social network size from the two time points.
Consistent with prior work from our group, children’s social network size before COVID is positively correlated with age; as children get older their network size increases (Figure 1; r = 0.47, p < 0.001). Interestingly, there are also age-related differences in the change in social network size. Negative values for change in social network size indicate that a child interacts with less people during COVID-19 as compared to before the pandemic. Our results show that older children are seeing a reduction in their social network size while infant network size is seeing less change (Figure 2; r = -0.34, p = 0.01). Once data collection is complete, we will further explore how changes in both children’s and parents’ social networks relate to children’s COVID-related stress. We will analyze how changes to social network size, the proportion of intense relationships, and proportion of adult/child relationships relates to children’s COVID-related stress. At the rate of current data collection (at least 10 subjects a week) we expect to have nearly 300 subjects by March 2021. This will allow us enough time to analyze and present the data at the conference in April 2021.
This study will describe the impact of COVID-19 on children’s changing social worlds. This study has practical implications about the effects of the pandemic, but it will also provide theoretical insights to understand how relationships outside of parent-child interactions impact children’s development.

Authors

• Nicole Burke, University of Chicago
  Presenting Author

• Abigael Thinakaran, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• Amanda Woodward, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author