Children played video games for up to 19 hours and became more exposed to violent online porn during lockdown, the UK COVID-19 Inquiry has heard, as the impact of the pandemic and school closures disrupted the “very fabric of childhood”.
The latest module of the wide-ranging inquiry was told on its opening day some children suffered “grievous harm” at the hands of those who should have been caring for them during the pandemic.
The COVID inquiry was set up to scrutinise the decisions made around the virus and the impact they had on day-to-day life throughout the UK.
COVID-19 first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan at the end of 2019, and as it developed into a worldwide pandemic the UK went in and out of unprecedented lockdown measures for two years starting from March 2020.
Public hearings for module eight of the inquiry, namely Children and Young People, began on Monday.
This module will examine the impact of the pandemic on children and young people, namely their mental and physical health, and education or early years provision.
It is expected to run until 23 October.
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Counsel to the inquiry Clair Dobbin KC said the closure of schools “starkly highlighted” their importance as the agency which knows children and families best.
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She said evidence will be produced, during the next four weeks of hearings, that will show there was a decline in the number of children referred to social services during school closures.
She told the hearing: “The reality is that there were children who suffered grievous harm at the hands of their carers during the pandemic.
“The carers of those children bear responsibility for the violence and neglect inflicted on children, and these children stand as the starkest examples of what adults are capable of doing to children behind closed doors.”
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Meanwhile, regarding the impact of more time spent on the internet, Ms Dobbin said evidence from the National Crime Agency (NCA) would show “that school closures and furlough caused more children and child sexual abuse offenders to be online”, and that increased time children spent online was identified by the agency “as a threat”.
She said the NCA had concluded “that the restrictions imposed because of COVID triggered both temporary and accelerated ongoing changes to child sexual abuse offending” including more exposure to violent pornography and a rise in sexual abuse between young people of a similar age.
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Referencing online gaming and distractions from learning, she quoted one young person who said they were “sitting there with no school, playing Animal Crossing (a game) for like six months”, and another who said they played the Roblox online game for up to 19 hours a day at one point.
She quoted another as saying: “People would answer the remote lesson call in bed, people would be in science third lesson, and would literally have the camera off and would be posting on their Instagram stories or their Snapchat stories, literally them watching The Only Way Is Essex or something like that.”
Ms Dobbin acknowledged while those examples are not representative of every child’s experience, they were “a compelling illustration of how hard it was for some children to stay engaged at home”.
She added: “In other words, it’s the child’s voice which demonstrates what the problems were beyond the provision of devices or children theoretically logging on to join a class, and it shows what really needs to be tackled if online forms of education are to be effective in any future pandemic.”
