Well-Being and Stress of Children in Teaching by Digital Means during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Case in Santarém, Brazilian Amazonia

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused and is still causing many infections. An important change brought about by prevention actions was the closing of schools, and the adoption of teaching by digital means in private institutions. In this article, we aim to analyze the subjective well-being and stress of children aged 8 to 12 years in digital education during the COVID-19 pandemic in a city in the Brazilian Amazon. For data collection, we used the Children’s Global Life Satisfaction Scale, the Multidimensional Scale of Life Satisfaction for Children (MSLSC), and the Infantile Stress Scale, all via Google Forms. To analyze the data, we used descriptive statistics, correlation between variables and logistic regression. The Family domain obtained higher scores (4.54 ± 0.45). The Infantile Stress Scale showed that the children were in a normal phase, with some of them in an alert and even resistance phase. There was a strong positive correlation between the Family domain (r = 0.70; p-value < 0.05) and the Self domain (r = 0.70; p-value < 0.001). The higher the value of the predictor variable (Family domain), the lower the chances of a child belonging to the Resistance category. Therefore, the Family domain is an important component of children’s well-being, acting as a protective factor against child stress.