Violence against children is a global endemic, impacting more than 1 billion kids globally each year, write researchers Emma Jagasian, Nancy Perrin, and Jacquelyn Campbell of the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing with School of Medicine colleagues Sara Johnson and Mary Beth Nebel in “Unraveling the Neural Threads: Exploring the Association of Violence Exposure with Early Adolescent Brain Connectivity” (Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, April 2026).
“While emotional, physical, and social outcomes related to violence have been extensively studied, the neurobiological mechanisms linking violence to developmental outcomes remain underexplored,” they write.
What that violence does to a developing brain—particularly when it flashes constantly at children through social media and the internet—will of course become more evident over time. But the need for possible interventions is clear enough already: “Early adolescence is a time marked by increased neuroplasticity in the brain, where neural areas responsible for memory, goal setting, impulse control, and emotional regulation continue to mature, and cognitive networks become more interconnected or isolated. The more children are exposed to violence during this period, the more likely they are to suffer from alterations in brain connectivity across critical networks involved in emotions, self-control, and threat detection.