Impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic on obesity, internet addiction, and sleep quality in adolescents.
Fatma Daşdemir, Dilek Orbatu, Murat Bektaş and 1 others
PMID 35850000WHAT IT FOUND
In 395 adolescents, reported body mass index and Internet addiction scores were higher after the pandemic, and sleep quality was reported as worse.
The study cannot show the pandemic caused these changes.
Key findings
01Mean BMI was 22.82 kg/m² before the pandemic and 24.38 kg/m² after, and the obese group was 27.1% before and 34.9% after.
02Mean Internet addiction scale scores were 18.68 before and 24.71 after the pandemic.
03The paper reports worse sleep quality after the pandemic, and pandemic, sleep quality and Internet addiction together contributed to 10% of BMI change.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The sample was a convenience sample of adolescents attending hospital outpatient clinics, so it may not represent adolescents who were not in clinic. Pre-pandemic and post-pandemic height, weight, Internet use and sleep were collected after the pandemic, not measured before the pandemic. Healthy children had fewer clinic visits during the pandemic, and participants came from outpatient referrals, so adolescents who did not attend clinic are not represented. The study did not assign an intervention or use a control group, so it cannot show that the pandemic caused the changes. The paper reports sleep quality decreased, but the sleep scale is described as higher scores meaning lower sleep quality, and the reported scores decreased from 16.09 to 13.74.
Declared interests
The authors report no financial support and no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat this as proof that the pandemic caused obesity, Internet addiction or poor sleep, or that reducing screen time will improve BMI. The study used a convenience sample of outpatient adolescents, compared self-reported pre-pandemic and post-pandemic data after the pandemic, and found associations rather than tested effects.