Adolescent Social Anxiety and Perceived Social Support: Before and After COVID-19 Lockdown

Social anxiety is a common subset of anxiety and often starts to affect individuals at a young age. The occurrence of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused unprecedented social conditions for many adolescents and may have affected those with social anxiety differently than those with lesser symptoms. This study examined the predictability of future social anxiety levels in 103 female adolescents based on changes in perceived social support during the COVID-19 pandemic. It used a model of analysis with two timepoints (one before Lane County COVID-19 lockdown, and one after the onset of lockdown), and two rating scales: the Revised Self Consciousness Scale for children (RSCS-C) and the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS). Both changes in perceived social support and past social anxiety levels were shown to be significant predictors of future social anxiety levels in the participant population