School Children's COVID-Related Future Anxiety over the Course of 8 Months of the Pandemic

Abstract

To explore the long-term effects of the COVID-19-pandemic on children, N = 140 8-to 10-year-olds were asked about their COVID-related future anxiety (CRFA) in their classrooms during months 6, 9, and 14 of the pandemic which started in March 2020 in Germany. Future anxiety was defined as a “state of apprehension, uncertainty, fear, worry, or anxiety about unfavor-able changes in a more distant personal future” which was related to the effects of the CO-VID-19-pandemic. In this survey, 13 % to 19 % of children reported experiencing CRFA “often” on at least one of the four items of the newly developed CRFA scale. Experiencing CRFA “often” was reported by 16% of the children at two and by 8 % of the children at three measurement points, among them more girls and more children from homes with poor educational back-grounds. Analyses uncovered large interindividual differences: For 45 % of the children CRFA decreased between months 6 and 9 of the pandemic, whereas for 43 % it increased. Children of parents with low educational backgrounds were more likely to report frequent CRFA at all three measurement time points, even after controlling for gender and incidence of COVID-19-in Germany. This confirms predictions that contagion risk and controllability influence future an-xiety. The descriptive results additionally support earlier findings that many children already experience future anxiety about macro-level events. The results on chronic CRFA underscore the urgency to examine the long-time effects of CRFA with greater care. This is of paramount importance considering the macro-level challenges of the future.