Feyisola Babarinde
COVID-19 pandemic has affected adults, children, and young people (CYP) differently. This Special Study Module (SSM) looked at the pandemic’s impact on the psychosocial wellbeing of CYP . Literature searches were conducted using well-established databases and the grey literature. Ten articles were included (due to the novelty of the topic, most were from 2019 onwards). Results showed that the pandemic had both negative and positive impacts on the psychosocial wellbeing of CYP. Negative impacts included depressive symptoms, and boredom. Positive impacts included resilience and phenomena such as increased pro-social behaviours related to internet use. Most of the articles published assessed mental health problems (such as anxiety and depression), rather than psychosocial wellbeing. Studies were also often in high-resource settings, so findings could not be generalised because many CYP in low-income countries and lower socio-economic households may not have access to internet and electronic devices. There was also more in the literature about older children compared to younger ones. More work is needed to study the impact of the pandemic on the psychosocial wellbeing of CYP, especially younger children, to enable their voices to be heard and to inform strategic planning and policy making to tackle COVID-19 pandemic and future pandemics.