Kids These Days! A Cross-Temporal Meta-Analysis of Changes in Emotional and Behavioral Problems of Population-Based Samples Over the Past Decades

There is a general conception that mental health problems are increasing in younger generations, though little objective comparisons exist. The current meta-analysis examined changes in subclinical mean-level emotional and behavioral problems among population-based samples of youth (1-18 years) globally over the last four decades. We searched systematically in PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, EBSCO and Google Scholar with pre-registered criteria [removed for masked review]. Included studies (k = 175, N = 418,528) used the standardized and cross-culturally validated Child Behavior Checklist with parents, teachers and self-reports. A cross-temporal meta-analysis was conducted with data points between 1981 to 2019. Age, sex, response rate, continent were used as moderators. Meta-regression analyses, with year of data collection as predictor, showed that total emotional and behavioral problems did not change in the past 40 years. However, there was evidence of change in specific problems. We find strong evidence for decreased aggression in children over time (parent report: k = 47, byear = -0.18, p = .009, 95%CI[-0.31,-0.05]; self-report: k = 9, byear = -0.41, p = .006, 95%CI[-0.66,-0.16]). There was evidence of a decrease in parent reported externalizing problems in middle childhood (k = 60, byear = -0.21, p < .001, 95%CI[-0.30,-0.11]) and specifically in teenage boys (k = 12, byear = -0.27, p = .049, 95%CI[-0.54,0]). In contrast, there were increases in parent-reported attention (k = 63, byear = 0.24, p = .004, 95%CI[0.08,0.40]) and thought problems (k = 40, byear = 0.09, p = .006, 95%CI[0.03,0.15]) for youth overall, and anxiety-depression symptoms specifically in teens (k = 12, byear = 0.26, p = .011, 95%CI[0.07,0.45]), although with high heterogeneity. In sum, our results do not support concerns that children and young people today experience more emotional and behavioural problems than previous generations, rather, they experience subtly different patterns of difficulties. However, an important limitation of the study is that post COVID-19 changes were not studied.