Abstract
Social connectedness at school is crucial to children's development, yet very little is known about the way it has been affected by school closures during COVID-19 pandemic. We compared pre-post lockdown levels of social connectedness at a school playground in forty-three primary school-aged children, using wearable sensors, observations, peer nominations and self-reports. Upon school reopening, findings from sensors and peer nominations indicated increases in children's interaction time, network diversity and network centrality. Group observations indicated a decrease in no-play social interactions and an increase in children's involvement in social play. Explorative analyses did not reveal relations between changes in peer connectedness and pre-lockdown levels of peer connectedness or social contact during the lockdown period. Findings pointed at the role of recess in contributing to children's social well-being and the importance of attending to their social needs upon reopening.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 101562 |
| Journal | Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology |
| Volume | 87 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care.Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.
Funding
The project was supported by the Innovational Research Incentives Scheme (a VIDI grant) by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NOW), grant no. 452–07-004 to Carolien Rieffe; and by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement, grant no. 707404 to Adva Eichengreen.Keywords
- Children
- COVID-19
- Playground
- Sensors
- Social connectedness