Feeling Bad vs. Losing Interest: Two Different Ways COVID-19 Affected Teens' Mental Health

What is it about?

This study examined 306 teenagers in Israel (ages 12–18) during the first few months of the COVID-19 lockdown, from May to August 2020. Every two weeks for four months, the teens filled out surveys about how they were feeling. The researchers tracked three things: their overall mental well-being (how good they felt, day to day), their negative affect (feeling sad, anxious, or irritable), and their anhedonia (losing interest or pleasure in things they'd normally enjoy). The researchers wanted to know two main things: did well-being get worse as the lockdown dragged on, and did starting out with more negative feelings or less pleasure in things predict how a teen's well-being would change over time? They found that, on average, well-being didn't steadily worsen over the four months. But that "average" hid a lot of differences between individual teens - some got better, some got worse, and it varied a lot person to person. Age and gender didn't really explain these differences. What mattered was how a teen felt at the very start. Teens who started out with high negative affect (feeling sad or anxious) actually had low well-being at first but improved over time. Teens who started with low negative affect had good well-being initially but experienced declines over time. Anhedonia worked differently. Teens with low interest in things had consistently lower well-being throughout the whole four months, but their trend over time didn't change one way or the other.

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Why is it important?

Not every teen reacts to a crisis the same way, so lumping them together hides what's really happening. The average result made it look like nothing changed, but underneath that, some teens were doing worse, and some were doing better. If you only look at averages, you miss both groups. Feeling bad emotions and losing interest in things aren't the same problem, and they don't need the same fix. Feeling anxious or sad seemed to shift over time, sometimes even getting better as teens adjusted to the situation. But losing interest in things stayed a steady drag on well-being the whole way through, and didn't seem to improve on its own. That suggests that if you're trying to help a teen who's struggling, it matters which one they're dealing with. Someone who's anxious might just need time and support to adjust, but someone who's stopped caring about things they used to enjoy might need something more active, like help getting re-engaged in activities they find rewarding.