When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down much of the U.S. in March 2020, life came to a standstill and millions of people experienced drastic changes in their lifestyles. For adolescents, this meant continuing to grow and develop despite different daily routines and circumstances, including virtual classes as schools were shut down.
Experiencing this abrupt shift herself led Cornell doctoral candidate Kathleen McCormick to wonder how the pandemic was affecting the well-established link between puberty and depression in girls. The answer, according to her recent study published in the journal Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology, reveals something unexpected about the deeply social nature of adolescent development.
First, it’s important to note that decades of research consistently shows that puberty increases depression risk in girls. Two patterns stand out: Girls who are more physically developed and girls who mature earlier than their peers tend to experience more depressive symptoms.
McCormick – who works in the Adolescent Transitions Lab at the Cornell College of Human Ecology – wanted to understand whether the social interactions, which paused completely during the pandemic, contribute to this phenomenon. Her study examined nearly 600 girls across the U.S., comparing data collected before and during the pandemic.
During the pandemic, the traditional link between pubertal development and depression disappeared. Although pandemic participants had more depressive symptoms than their pre-pandemic counterparts, pubertal development was not associated with depressive symptoms.
Why? McCormick offers two possibilities. First, remote schooling may have allowed adolescents to conceal physical changes. Without daily face-to-face comparisons, the social pressures that typically accompany puberty were reduced.
Second — and more concerning — the overall stress of the pandemic may have been so overwhelming that it overshadowed puberty’s usual influence on mental health.
Depression scores among girls during the pandemic rose dramatically. Using a standard scale that measures depressive symptoms, her team found that before the pandemic, girls’ average score was 14.2 — just below the threshold of 15 that indicates probable depression. During the pandemic, that average jumped to 23.65, well above the threshold.
“It points out just how difficult the pandemic was, and how many things the girls had to navigate during the pandemic that weren’t just puberty,” McCormick said.
This alarming increase aligns with the broader youth mental health crisis that researchers have documented. The pandemic didn’t create this crisis, but it certainly accelerated it.
The study also examined menarche — a girl’s first menstrual period — and found intriguing patterns. During the pandemic, girls who experienced menarche at an earlier age reported greater depressive symptoms.
This research offers several important insights. First, it reinforces that puberty is not just a biological process but a profoundly social one. The peer interactions and social comparisons that typically accompany physical changes play a significant role in how puberty affects mental health.
“Puberty is not purely a biological experience,” McCormick explained. “It is fundamentally a social experience too.”
Second, the study demonstrates how dramatically context matters. When the social environment changed during the pandemic, so did puberty’s impact on mental health — though not necessarily for the better, given the overall spike in depression.
Finally, the research highlights the severity of the adolescent mental health crisis. Even as the immediate threat of the pandemic has passed, its effects on young people’s mental health may linger.
The take-home message: The pandemic temporarily disrupted the usual relationship between puberty and depression in girls, likely because the social context of adolescence changed so dramatically. However, this didn’t protect girls’ mental health — overall depression increased significantly during this period. As schools and social life have returned to normal, understanding how the social aspects of puberty influence mental health remains crucial for supporting adolescent girls through this vulnerable developmental period.
