1 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 (Lionetti et al., 2022; 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 (Spinelli et al., 2020) 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, 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 (Lionetti et al., 2022).

2 METHOD

3 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.

4 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 explanation is that an increase on time spent on social network in children may have reduced the time spent on those positive parent–child interactions (Bozzola et al., ) that constitute, for younger children, the elective context to learn and consolidate emotion regulation competences (Tronik et al., 1998).

Second, in line with prior research (Domingues-Montanari, 2017; Stiglic & Viner, 2019), we found that children and adolescents engaged in solitary screen time activities were more vulnerable to behavioural problems. Hence, there are reasons to be concerned about the impact of screen time for its deleterious effects on irritability and low mood (Domingues-Montanari, 2017; Lissak, 2018).

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).

5 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.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

No potential competing interest was reported by the authors.

ETHICS STATEMENT

The study was approved by the ethical commitment of the Department and was conducted according to American Psychological Association guidelines in accordance with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration.