Another Silent Cost of Lockdowns: Language and Social-Cognitive Delays That Threaten Children’s Potential

It is hard to believe that the COVID-19 pandemic began nearly six years ago. In some respects, it feels like it happened yesterday. I remember shortly before the lockdowns started to take effect in the United States, I wrote about how we should have relied more on voluntary social distancing instead of lockdowns. Unfortunately, politicians across the country (and indeed the world) panicked and imposed lockdowns in the name of "following the science," even in spite of the fact that pandemic guidance from the likes of the World Health Organization and Johns Hopkins was to not implement lockdowns. 

Children Paid the Price

Many warned that such unprecedented restrictions would come with considerable costs, myself included. Years later, the ramifications of those lockdowns are playing out. I wrote a three-parter on it earlier this year (see here, here, and here). What is sad is that children bore the brunt of these costs. I first discussed in 2022 how lockdowns, school closures, and other pandemic measures would impose heavy costs on children. Sadly, the evidence continues to mount. 

Scotland's Shock: The Lancet Study

A study published at the Lancet (Hardie et al., 2025) last month adds something more alarming to the ledger, even more so when I covered a British study in 2023 about lockdowns and social-emotional development. It examined the relationship between COVID-19 public & social health measures (PSHM) and developmental concerns among about 258,000 Scottish children. This is significant since it is the largest known analysis of population-level statistics to assess the relationship between PSHM and development concerns in Europe, which is a great sample size. What did the study find? The study's most pronounced findings were a reduction in language acquisition and social-cognitive skills. These delays were more pronounced in children from families with fewer resources, i.e., the poor. The proportion of toddlers flagged with at least one developmental concern increased by up to 6.6 percentage points compared with pre-lockdown trends.

Not an Isolated Incident: A Global Problem

You can say that this was an observational study, so it is not as good as an experimental study in respect to proving causation. You can also say that it was limited to Scotland, so you cannot extrapolate too much. Here's the thing. This is not the only study to find such delays:

• A cohort comparison study found that 3.5-5.5-year-old children tested after the lockdowns performed significantly worse on "false-belief" tasks (a measure of social cognition) the similar pre-pandemic children, even after controlling for age and language ability (Scott et al., 2024).
• A meta-analysis of 10 studies across six countries from the Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics found significant impairment of language and communication skills in early childhood development (O'Connor et al., 2025).
• A cross-sectional study conducted in Turkey of 709 children found incidents of increased delays in linguistic and personal-social skills in children assessed during the pandemic relative to pre-pandemic (Özkan, 2025).
• A study from South Korea found that children aged 30-36 months during the pandemic had a higher risk of neuro-developmental delays in the communication and social interaction domains compared with pre-pandemic children, especially for those of low socio-economic status (Lee et al., 2024).
• A broad systemic review of lockdowns in the U.S. generally found detrimental effects on child development (Taylor et al., 2025).

Why Early Development Matters

There is increased evidence of the adverse effects that lockdowns and school closures had on early childhood development. This is serious because these sorts of delays are not temporary. Developmental psychology research suggests that early language and social-communication deficits correlate with persistent behavioral, social, and academic difficulties later in life. 

Socioeconomic Inequality Widened

As some of these studies indicate, the impact was disproportionately felt among lower-income households. That makes intuitive sense. Most people of low socioeconomic status are not part of the "laptop class." They faced greater economic stressors during the pandemic. For children in lower-income families, lockdowns were compounded by smaller living spaces, limited access to digital learning tools, heightened parental stress, and fewer extracurricular opportunities. When you couple the unequal starting point imposed by socioeconomic differences with delays in foundational developmental skills, this creates a feedback loop that magnifies inequality. 

The Left and the Lockdown Lovers

I remember a time before the pandemic when income inequality was a cause célèbre for many on the Left. During the pandemic, those on the Left were more supportive of strict COVID measures than those on the Right (Pew Research). I bring this up because there is a sad irony here. During the pandemic, there was a strong correlation between political leanings and support for lockdown policies. Many of those who decried income inequality before the pandemic were some of the most enthusiastic of the Lockdown Lovers. Yet they overlooked how these COVID measures widened the very gaps they claimed to oppose. In effect, the group of people most concerned with income inequality were the ones who supported interventions that deepened the intergenerational divide that they had opposed pre-pandemic.

Lockdowns: A Disaster for Children and Society 

This brings us to the tragic punchline. The Lancet study, with a growing mountain of research, shows that lockdowns simply did not slow down child development. They did so most for the kids whose families had the fewest resources to weather the pandemic. These early delays increase the likelihood of reduced educational attainment, higher rates of special educational needs, and potential long-term economic consequences. These early developmental delays can echo through a child's entire life, affecting academic achievement, social skills, mental health, and even future economic productivity, with consequences that could persist for decades. While not all children will experience these outcomes, these risks are real, measurable, and consequential. Meanwhile, the lockdowns and the subsequent developmental delays directly widened the socioeconomic gaps that had historically been derided by the Left. The "lockdowns should protect the vulnerable" narrative did not simply fail. It harmed the people it was meant to protect. 

To call the lockdowns a policy misstep would be a woeful understatement. They were one of the worst peacetime public-policy decisions enacted in human history because it was an unprecedented social experiment recklessly implemented with disastrous results and very few benefits. At this point, what we as a society can do is acknowledge the harm done, do our utmost to help the children whose developmental skills were delayed with mitigation and remediation programs, hold decision-makers accountable for their failures, raise awareness of how public policy enacted in an emergency and done in the name of fear can backfire, and make sure that we never hand over power to people who are so addicted to their moral superiority that they cannot even be bothered to do a basic risk assessment or cost-benefit analysis before wreaking havoc on the people they swore to serve and protect.