The effect of sports on teenagers’ depression symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Throughout 2020 and 2021, many student teenagers were unmotivated and miserable. News of death, disease processes, alienation from society, and active use of social media affected people's mental health severely during the pandemic. Some schools provided student with the opportunity to do sports online. In this study, we sought to investigate the relationship between doing sports and depressive symptoms during the pandemic as we observed many students appeared unmotivated and wanted to see if any factors made a difference. We collected Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) scores from students, aged 15 and 16 years, and compared the data to find a relation. We hypothesized that students who did not participate in sports during the pandemic would have higher BDI scores and a higher level of depressive symptoms than students who did participate in sports. We observed a significant correlation between depressive symptom levels and sports status. In our study we saw that 9 out of 10 students with severe depression symptoms did not do sports. We found no significant relationship between depressive symptoms and either gender or place of exercise. Our results show that doing sports can be a good solution for adolescents to cope with the negative effects of quarantine and general depression.