The Impact of COVID-19 on Children's Social Networks and Word Learning

Abstract

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the scientific community must begin to grapple with the lasting consequences of its profound social restrictions on our most vulnerable populations, including young children. In light of existing literature suggesting that children with more numerous social relationships may develop language more quickly, the pandemic’s sweeping quarantine measures become a potential developmental risk factor. This study investigates 1) whether children experienced a significant shift in the size and composition of their social networks during the pandemic; and 2) whether young children who maintained larger and/or more stable social networks throughout the pandemic have larger current vocabularies. Using an online parent-report survey, we measured the vocabularies of 301 children in the United States and retrospectively mapped their social networks at four pandemic and pre-pandemic timepoints. We found that children’s networks responded to the pandemic similarly to adults’, losing overall network ties (average of 1 total tie lost, 2 in-person ties lost) but maintaining the same number of close ties, though networks had recovered to their original size one year into the pandemic. Overall, children’s vocabulary scores were significantly lower than age-matched norms. However, we found that children who maintained larger networks throughout the pandemic have larger current vocabularies than those with smaller pandemic networks. This study is the first to provide empirical support for social networks as a potential mediator of pandemic-induced language loss.