Hygienic Aspects of Adaptation to Distance Learning in High School Children and
Students of Both Sexes
Authors: Shubochkina Evgenyia I. , Ivanov  , Blinova  
Published: September 2023

Introduction: Digitalization of education, which has been widely implemented in Russia since 2015, has made it possible to provide distance learning for schoolchildren and students during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results of assessing indicators of the functional state of schoolchildren and students in this mode of education showed the possibility of such negative consequences as increased fatigue, complaints related to the musculoskeletal system, pronounced manifestations of computer vision syndrome and stress.
Objective: To assess age and sex-specific patterns of adaptation of high school children, students of vocational schools and universities to distance learning.
Materials and methods: We conducted an anonymous online survey of high school children in the cities of Moscow and Omsk (n = 91) and students of a college and a university in Omsk (56 and 43 young people, respectively) using a specially developed questionnaire containing 36 questions about health status and well-being after online classes and finishing homework, duration of leisure-time Internet use, and lifestyle. We evaluated indicators of well-being, complaints of fatigue, headaches, irritability, pain associated with the musculoskeletal system, manifestations of computer vision
syndrome, other complaints occurring during e-learning and doing homework. The analysis of data on 190 subjects was carried out using online calculators for estimating statistical criteria using generally accepted statistical methods. The results of descriptive statistics were presented as arithmetic means (M) and their standard errors (±m). We used the Student’s and Fischer’s criteria and estimated values of relative health risks (RR), their confidence intervals and the etiological fraction (EF, %).
Results: We found that distance learning increased the prevalence of complaints of fatigue, headaches, irritability, neck and back pain after online classes and especially homework. We established sex-specific differences in health effects of the total academic load. Young women were more vulnerable than young men. In schoolgirls, risks of headaches after online classes were statistically significant compared to those after homework (RR = 3.4; 95 % CI = 1.37–8.45) with a very high degree of correlation (EF = 70.6 %). Irritability after classes was also more frequent in girls. Female vocational school
students had higher rates of severe fatigue after classes compared to male students (RR = 2.77; 95 % CI = 1.07–7.16). They were also more likely to complain of pain in the right wrist. Female university students had even more pronounced sex-specific differences in vulnerability compared to their male peers in terms of fatigue after school and homework, pain in neck (RR = 8.05; 95 % CI = 1.24–52.4) and back (RR = 3.83; 95 % CI = 1.22–12.1) after finishing homework. We observed that leisure and lifestyle of all the students were characterized by excess use of the Internet, reduced sleep duration, and low physical activity.
Conclusions: There are significant differences in the lifestyle and reactions of girls and boys to the academic load in the course of distance learning. Our findings show that e-learning can negatively affect students’ well-being, contributing to complaints typical of computer visual syndrome and disorders of the musculoskeletal system. We have obtained evidence proving the necessity to regulate the total load of digital education in order to attenuate its adverse health effects in modern adolescents and young people, especially females.