Broad social changes since the pandemic, including rising rates of poverty and increased screen time, likely factors in the increase in vulnerabilities in core areas of development, Dr. Martin Guhn, one of the study's researchers, said.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
More than one-third of children in kindergarten in British Columbia are struggling with core areas of development, including their cognitive development and physical well-being, representing the highest number since researchers began collecting data, according to a new study from the University of British Columbia.
The research shows that young children are doing worse in almost every category of core development compared with pre-pandemic levels.
The findings are concerning because children who start school when they are vulnerable in one or more areas have a higher likelihood of struggling socially or academically in later years, said researchers at the Human Early Learning Partnership, or HELP, at UBC’s School of Population and Public Health, who conducted the study.
The findings are based on data collected from teacher surveys regarding 33,625 children in their kindergarten year between 2021 and 2025.
Researchers at HELP have been collecting this data, and typically releasing it every three years, since 2001.
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Children who fall below certain thresholds established for areas of development are deemed vulnerable.
The latest data show that in areas of development that include communication skills and general knowledge, social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive development, and physical health and well-being, a higher percentage of children are vulnerable compared to the cohort surveyed between 2017 and 2020.
“We’ve seen the highest increase from wave to wave that we’ve ever seen, across the board,” said Martin Guhn, an associate professor at HELP.
For example, 18.4 per cent of children were deemed vulnerable in social competence, up from 16.1 per cent in the period from 2017 to 2020.
While the increases in many categories were slight, the study also found the percentage of children who are vulnerable in three or more areas increased by 14 per cent.
The increase in vulnerabilities in core areas of development is likely due in large part to broad social changes since the pandemic, including rising rates of poverty and increasing amounts of time kids spend on screens, Dr. Guhn said.
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Getting sufficient sleep, eating healthy diets, minimizing sugar intake and having access to a child care spot are all related to poverty, while factors such as playing outdoors and playing with other children overlap with screen time, Dr. Guhn said.
“If those experiences start to become less frequent or rare, that then affects children’s development in terms of their brain development, their health, their learning, their social-emotional skills,” he said. “Everything that’s good for kids has been reduced during the pandemic and after.”
The excessive time many young children spent on screens makes it more difficult for them to learn things like emotional regulation, said Michael Cheng, a child and family psychiatrist at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, who was not involved with the study.
“If you put a kid in front of a screen for several hours a day, that’s naturally overstimulating, so that’s not good for their nervous system development,” he said.
Only 62 per cent of children ages five to 11 met the Canadian guidelines of no more than two hours of screen time a day between 2022 and 2024, down from 73 per cent during the period from 2018 to 2019, according to Statistics Canada data.
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The Canadian Paediatric Society recommends no screen time for children under two-years-old and no more than one hour a day for children two to five-years-old.
Poverty and things related to it, such as lack of access to resources, are the largest predictors of vulnerability, Dr. Guhn said.
Nearly 150,000 children and youth in B.C. were living in households below the low-income threshold in 2023, an increase of 1,800 children over the year prior, according to the latest B.C. Child Poverty Report Card from the First Call Child and Youth advocacy Society, released last month.
Many of the issues highlighted in the report, including increasing food insecurity, are being witnessed across Canada.
The percentage of people living in food insecure households in Canada, not including the territories, jumped to 25.5 per cent in 2024, up from 16.8 in 2019, according to Statistics Canada.
“It really has an impact on kids socially and their mental health and their physical health,” said Adrienne Montani, executive director of First Call.
The vulnerabilities that children are showing now may have negative effects on them in years to come if they are not addressed, Dr. Guhn said.
“Children who are experiencing multiple vulnerabilities early on are more likely to experience mental health problems down the road and also not graduate on time,” he said.