On February 27, 2020, the first COVID-19 case was confirmed in the Netherlands. The COVID-19 pandemic has had substantial influence on adolescents’ lives impacting their academic achievement, mental well-being, and friendships (Barendse et al., 2022; Bernasco et al., 2021; Klootwijk et al., 2021; Li et al., 2021; Panagouli et al., 2021; Romm et al., 2021). Adolescence is characterized by increased importance of peers, especially close friends, and friendships have wide-ranging benefits for adolescents (Bukowski et al., 2009; Furman & Buhrmester, 1992). Friendship can be defined as a strong reciprocal emotional bond between two individuals, characterized by reciprocity in liking, affect, and behavior (Bukowski et al., 2009; Hartup & Stevens, 1997). High quality friendships are generally distinguished by many positive features (e.g., security, intimacy) and few negative features (e.g., conflict, rivalry) (Berndt, 2002; Bukowski et al., 1994). With age, adolescents increasingly depend on friends for their social support (Bukowski et al., 2009; Hartup & Stevens, 1997), which suggests that friends could play a crucial role in cognitive and mental health outcomes of adolescents, especially during a crisis such as a pandemic. Pre-pandemic research has indeed demonstrated that high friendship quality is related to higher academic achievement and fewer internalizing problems in adolescents (Sebanc et al., 2016; Waldrip et al., 2008). However, little is known on the protective role of friendship quality on adolescents’ academic and internalizing outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the current study, our two main goals were to examine the possible changes in adolescents’ academic and internalizing outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic, and whether friendship quality would buffer against these changes in academic and internalizing outcomes.
The pandemic has brought along many changes in adolescents’ lives due to not only the lockdowns and the closure of the schools but also due to the many social and societal restrictions that have been set in place. For many adolescents, schools and extracurricular activities serve a highly social function where they can socialize with their friends. Not being able to see their peers at school and not being able to meet with them outside of school, adolescents’ lives have been largely restricted during the first two years of the pandemic. As such, the COVID-19 pandemic can be regarded as a stressful period. Prior research has demonstrated that friendship quality can have a protective effect on academic achievement and internalizing problems for adolescents who experienced stressful life events. A previous study has for example shown a protective effect of high levels of friend support on academic achievement in adolescents who experienced a stressful life event (i.e., bullying) (Rothon et al., 2011). Additionally, prior research has revealed that friendship quality is related to reduced subsequent depressive symptoms in adolescents who experienced a stressful life event (e.g., peer bullying and emotional neglect) (Van Harmelen et al., 2016; Zhao et al., 2021). Multiple studies examined the impact of the family and home context (e.g., parenting, financial stress) on children and adolescents’ academic achievement and internalizing problems during the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., Cohodes et al., 2021; Haelermans et al., 2022; Liang et al., 2021; Liao et al., 2022; Low & Mounts, 2022; Westrupp et al., 2021). However, few studies examined the influence of the support system outside the family (e.g., friendship quality) on adolescents’ internalizing problems during the COVID-19 pandemic. To our knowledge, studies are also lacking on the influence of friendship quality on adolescents’ academic achievement during the pandemic. Furthermore, few studies examined the long-term changes in adolescents’ academic and internalizing outcomes across the COVID-19 pandemic.
Academic outcomes of children and adolescents were affected by the pandemic. At the start of the pandemic researchers predicted that the school closure during the COVID-19 pandemic would lead to a learning loss in children and adolescents, based on pre-pandemic absenteeism literature and analyses of summer learning patterns (Kuhfeld et al., 2020). Adolescents indeed reported a negative impact on learning (Li et al., 2021) in the beginning of the pandemic (June-Aug 2020). Furthermore, a systematic review including 42 studies has shown that children and adolescents experienced learning losses during the pandemic compared to pre-pandemic years (Panagouli et al., 2021). However, almost all 42 studies included in the systematic review examined academic achievement in children and/or adolescents in the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, except for three studies which included data from 2021. Furthermore, most studies from the systematic review used self-report or parent-report questionnaires to measure academic achievement, instead of a more objective measure such as test scores or school records. In addition, according to a pre-pandemic systematic review on the influence of learning strategies on academic achievement in online learning environments, peer learning should be prioritized in online learning contexts (Broadbent & Poon, 2015). However, to our knowledge, research is lacking on the possible protective influence of close friends (i.e., friendship quality) on adolescents’ academic achievement across the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mental health outcomes of adolescents were also affected by the pandemic. Prior research during the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that adolescents experienced more internalizing problems, such as feelings of depression and anxiety (Ellis et al., 2020; Li et al., 2021; Weissman et al., 2021). Two prior studies demonstrated that higher pre-COVID-19 pandemic friendship quality was related to fewer internalizing problems (e.g., depression symptoms) in adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic and specifically during a school lockdown (Bernasco et al., 2021; Houghton et al., 2022). However, these previous studies comparing pre- and during-COVID-19 pandemic measures only incorporated one or two data collection points at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and whether these effects remained similar or became amplified across the course of the pandemic is not yet known.
Current Study
To obtain a better understanding of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on adolescents’ mental and academic well-being, the aim of the current study was to examine possible changes in the academic achievement and internalizing problems of young adolescents (aged 11–16) across two full academic years during the COVID-19 pandemic (November 2019 until June 2021). Specifically, we examined whether friendship quality buffered against changes in the academic achievement and changes in internalizing problems of young adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our longitudinal study comprised four data collection points across two academic years, with timepoint 1 (T1) (pre-pandemic: November 2019) and T2 (beginning pandemic: May/June 2020) in the first academic year, and T3 (November/December 2020) and T4 (May/June 2021) in the second academic year. We preregistered this study on the open science framework (OSF) before we conducted the analyses, and we also uploaded our deviations from the preregistration on OSF (see https://osf.io/z3cyh/?view_only=11ff1226d7e24bd8aafe82ede0b3bdb0).
Based on previous research, we hypothesized that the COVID-19 pandemic would have a negative effect on academic achievement (Hypothesis 1a; Li et al., 2021; Panagouli et al., 2021), as measured with objective school records. We expected the change in academic achievement to be most pronounced at the beginning of the pandemic (T2) compared to before the pandemic (T1). Furthermore, we hypothesized that better friendship quality (i.e., high positive and low negative friendship quality) would have a buffering effect on the changes in academic achievement across the COVID-19 pandemic (Hypothesis 1b; Broadbent & Poon, 2015). That is, we expected that friendship quality would moderate the influence of time on academic achievement. Specifically, we expected that for adolescents with a better friendship quality (i.e., high positive and low negative friendship quality) academic achievement would not change over time (across the pandemic), whereas for adolescents with a lower friendship quality academic achievement would decrease over time (across the pandemic).
Our second hypothesis was that there would be an increase in internalizing problems over time during the COVID-19 pandemic (Hypothesis 2a; Ellis et al., 2020; Li et al., 2021; Weissman et al., 2021). We expected this change in internalizing problems to be most pronounced from T1 to T4, because we expected a cumulative negative effect of the restrictions of the pandemic on adolescents’ internalizing problems. Finally, we hypothesized that better friendship quality (i.e., high positive and low negative friendship quality) would have a buffering effect on the changes in internalizing problems across the COVID-19 pandemic (Hypothesis 2b; Bernasco et al., 2021; Houghton et al., 2022). That is, we expected that friendship quality would moderate the influence of time on internalizing problems. Specifically, we expected that for adolescents with a better friendship quality (i.e., high positive and low negative friendship quality) internalizing problems would not change over time (across the pandemic), whereas for adolescents with a lower friendship quality internalizing problems would increase over time (across the pandemic).