Protective and risk activities for emotional and behavioural well‐being of children and adolescents during the COVID‐19 lockdown

Abstract Background The lockdown imposed to contain the COVID‐19 pandemic brought deep changes in the daily life of Italian children and adolescents, increasing the time spent at home. This study aims to explore how activities that children and adolescents carried out at home during the lockdown were related to their emotional and behavioural well‐being. Method Parents completed an anonymous online survey on how much time their children and adolescents dedicated to social networks, solitary screen time, play time and to a series of parent–child dyadic activities. They also reported on their offspring's emotional difficulties and behavioural problems. Results The use of social networks had a negative impact on children's emotional difficulties, while it promoted well‐being in adolescents. Pertaining to solitary screen activities, these were associated with more behavioural problems in both children and adolescents. Regarding parent–child dyadic activities, get along with the parent was associated with less emotional difficulties and behavioural problems in children and with less behavioural problems in adolescents. Furthermore, for adolescents, the more they talked with the parent, the less behavioural problems they evidenced. Conclusion The current study may help to identify activities that could be promoted and those that should be limited to effectively menage home time, in order to ultimately safeguard the emotional and behavioural well‐being of children and adolescents.


| INTRODUCTION
The lockdown imposed to contain the COVID-19 pandemic brought deep changes in the lives of children and adolescents, as the closure of schools and educational facilities and an increase in time spent at home. Activities conducted at home were more limited and mostly carried out alone, or with the parent. These substantial changes in daily routines and activities had an impact on parents, and this, in turn, influenced children's well-being and adjustment Spinelli et al., 2020). The main aim of the present study was to investigate how and to what extend the activities performed at home during the lockdown by children and adolescents were related to their emotional and behavioural well-being. Specifically, we focused on relevant at-home activities such as time spent on social networks, solitary screen time, play time and on a set of different parent-child dyadic activities. Available research evidences reported that with the increase of time spent at home time, technology became essential to allow children and adolescents to interact with each other (Wiederhold, 2020). Indeed, social networks proved to be an ideal platform for children and adolescents to keep connection with peers during social distancing restrictions (Nagata et al., 2020). On the other hand, other studies provided evidence that time on social networks represents potentially a risky activity, especially for adolescent's self-regulation, bringing psychosocial outcomes such as depression or anxiety (OKeeffe & Clarke-Pearson, 2011).
Solitary screen-time activities, including watching TV or playing videogames, also continued to rise among children and adolescents during the lockdown (Pietrobelli et al., 2020), with potential risks for emotion regulation competences in children (Domingues-Montanari, 2017) and behavioural difficulties in adolescents (Twenge & Campbell, 2018). Besides the technological activities, during the pandemic restrictions children engaged in different play-based activities, such as play with LEGO or play with siblings, with positive effect on their emotional well-being (Graber et al., 2020). Indeed, a recent study indicated that play time was linked with positive emotions in children (Mondragon et al., 2021).
Finally, with the highly increment of home time, parents suddenly became the children's and adolescents' key reference point  and were more involved in dyadic activities, such as playing and reading together (Lee et al., 2020). These sharing moments may play a protective factor for emotional and behavioural well-being of children and adolescents (Pallini et al., 2018(Pallini et al., , 2019 during such a challenging period. Recent studies provided evidences that parent-child emotional closeness indeed promoted an overall positive adjustment to the pandemic, particularly in children potentially more vulnerable due to specific inherited, temperamental traits .

The current study
In sum, different studies highlighted how different types of homebased activities differently impacted on children's and adolescents' well-being. However, to the best of our knowledge, no study thus far has specifically examined what type of home-based activities contributed, and in which direction, to the adjustment during the lockdown.

| Procedure
Parents replied to an anonymous online survey, after having signed the written consent form and explicitly agreed to take part to the study. The survey was shared via social media 1 month after the beginning of the Covid-19 first wave lockdown in Italy.

| Activities performed by children and adolescents
Parents rated on an 8-point scale (from 1 = less than half an hour to 8 = seven hours or more) how much time children and adolescents dedicated to a series of seven activities. Activities were grouped as follows: time on social networks (one item), referring to time spent on social media including WhatsApp, Facebook or Instagram; solitary screen time (three items) that included watching TV, playing with videogames and playing with the mobile phone; and play time (three items) that included playing alone, playing with a partner and reading a book with the parent.

Key messages
• Social networks appeared to play a protective role for adolescents emotional well-being, during the COVID-19 lockdown.
• Social networks represent a risky activity for children, with an increase of emotional difficulties.
• Children and adolescents engaged in solitary screen time were more vulnerable to behavioural problems.
• Parents should limit solitary screen time in children and adolescents.
• Parents should encourage the sharing of quality time with children and adolescents.

| Parent and child dyadic activities
Parents rated on a 5-point scale (from 1 = less than a day to 5 = every day) how much time they spent with their children or adolescents on the following six activities: 'Having fun together', 'Reading with him/her', 'Listening to him/her ideas', 'Getting along', 'Talking about the next day's activities' and 'Asking how he/she feels'.
2.4.1 | Children's and adolescent's emotional and behavioural well-being Parents completed the Italian version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ; Goodman, 2001). In the current study, we included the subscales emotional difficulties and behavioural problems.

| Plan of analysis
We computed four multivariate general linear models. We considered as dependent variables the SDQ emotional difficulties and behavioural problems scales, and as predictors the activities performed by children and adolescents, and the parent-child dyadic activities. The two categories of predictors were investigated separately in children and adolescents.

| RESULTS
As reported in Table 1, in both groups of children and adolescents emerged a significant effect of time on social networks on SDQ emotional difficulties and of solitary screen time on SDQ behavioural problems. Particularly, in the children group, more time spent on social networks was associated with more emotional difficulties. Conversely, for the adolescent group, more time spent on social networks was associated with less emotional difficulties. In both groups, more solitary screen time activity was associated with more behavioural problems.
Regarding parent-child dyadic activities, as described in Table 2, in both groups a significant effect of the activity 'Getting along' emerged on SDQ emotional difficulties and behavioural problems.
Specifically, in the children group, the more they spent time 'Getting along' with their parent the less emotional difficulties and behavioural problems were reported. Similarly, in the group of adolescents, the more they spent time 'Getting along' with their parents the fewer behavioural problems were reported. Furthermore, in the group of adolescents, a significant effect of the activity 'Talking with him/her about next day's activities' emerged. Specifically, the more adolescent and parent 'Talk about the next day's activities', the fewer behavioural problems were reported.

| DISCUSSION
The current study provides a snapshot of how activities performed by children and adolescents during the lockdown were related to their emotional and behavioural well-being. Three major themes emerged.
First, in our study social networks appeared to play a protective role for emotional well-being, but only for adolescents. This is an unexpected and revealing result. Probably, with school closures and in the absence of face-to-face interaction with peers and friends, adolescents welcomed the advantages that technology offers for social connectivity (Goldschmidt, 2020). On the contrary, time spent on social networks were found to represent a risky activity for children's emotional well-being, with an increase of emotional difficulties. A possible T A B L E 1 Multivariate general linear model of activities performed by children and adolescents associated with strengths and difficulties questionnaire (SDQ) emotional and behavioural problems subscales scores B Std. error t Sign.
Confidence interval 95%  Third, we found that the sharing of activities between parents and children played a protective effect on emotional and behavioural well-being. Specifically, our results indicated that a parent-child relationship characterized by harmony and reconciliation was able to promote children's emotional and behavioural well-being. Getting along with the parent, establishing frequent and positive verbal exchanges in a context of understanding and support was protective for the adjustment to the pandemic (see also Gambin et al., 2020). This is in line with theoretical reasoning and evidences proving that, for adolescents, a relationship with the parent characterized by open communication is able to foster a sense of understanding with important consequences for well-being (Kobak et al., 2017).

| CONCLUSION AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Before concluding, it is important to acknowledge that the current study is not without limitations. The main limitation concerns the way in which the data were collected, that is, through parents-report questionnaire. However, this was the only applicable method for data collection when the first COVID-19 lockdown was issued. Besides, we did not explore the full range of possible child and adolescent activities. Future research should include the point of view of children and adolescents as well, to deepen our understanding of this topic and expanding the range of activities to be considered in such type of studies. Notwithstanding these limitations, we believe that our study points out for the possibility to prevent the onset of emotional and behavioural problems by promoting specific home-based activities that, even during extreme contexts as the COVID-19 lockdown, are able to promote well-being of children and adolescents. This is even more relevant if we consider that many studies have demonstrated the stability of behavioural problems over time (e.g., Robins, 1991) and a strong association between behavioural problems and later psychopathology (e.g., Caspi et al., 1996;Robins, 1991). To conclude, considering the deep changes that the lockdown and COVID-19 brought to the daily life of children and adolescents, with an increase in time spent at home even during transition periods when restrictions were partially released, we believe that this study could give an important contribution to the identification of helpful and protective activities to be promoted to support positive emotion regulation competences and decrease the risk of behavioural problems during potentially challenging periods.