When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States in March 2020, restrictions on daily lives, including school closures, raised concerns about the mental well-being of children and adolescents [5, 7, 13]. Starting in the fall of 2020, schools began resuming in-person learning, but adolescents from ethnoracially minoritized groups tended to remain in online learning, which raised alarms about ethnoracial mental health disparities [1, 2, 4, 14]. Past studies consistently reported that there were larger proportions of adolescents from minoritized ethnoracial groups attending schools fully online compared to their White counterparts. However, whether this differential tendency of ethnoracially minoritized adolescents to be in online learning was associated with disproportionate mental health harms for ethnoracially minoritized adolescents has been contested [3, 5, 6, 8].

On the one hand, some studies found that attending school online during the pandemic was associated with poor mental health and suggested that there were disproportionate mental health consequences for adolescents from minoritized ethnoracial groups [1, 6]. These studies primarily related school closures and online modes of learning to psychological distress among adolescents due to increased feelings of loneliness, confusion, affective challenges, and fear of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Since ethnoracially minoritized adolescents were more likely to experience school closures and online learning, those studies assumed that Black adolescents experienced more mental health difficulties [1, 6]. On the other hand, some studies suggested that despite disproportionately attending schools online during the pandemic, ethnoracially minoritized adolescents reported either comparable or better mental health than their White counterparts [3, 5]. For instance, one study found that during the pandemic, the prevalence of having seriously considered attempting suicide was lower among Black students than their White counterparts [5]. But, to our knowledge, no study directly examined how the association between school modality and mental health outcomes varied by race and ethnicity among U.S. adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic [7]. Therefore, our study addresses this gap.

We found online learning was negatively associated with White adolescents’ mental health but positively associated with Black adolescents’ mental health. The positive association between online learning and Black adolescents’ mental health may reflect how online learning relieved Black adolescents from stress due to racist encounters (e.g., disciplinary infractions), social anxiety, concerns about adequate safety measures for resuming in-person learning, and elevated risks of contracting SARS-CoV-2 [3, 4, 13, 15, 16].

In the United States, race and ethnicity correlate with trauma exposure during the pandemic. For example, past studies found that compared to White adolescents, Black adolescents were at increased risk of losing multiple loved ones and subsequent posttraumatic anxiety-related disorders [16]. During the pandemic, Black families and children experienced significantly higher rates of SARS-CoV-2 infections, hospitalizations, and deaths [4]. In addition, due to institutional and structural racism, the majority of Black adolescents in public schools historically attended schools with concentrated poverty. Those historically underresourced schools were likely to have poor school building quality, such as outdated HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) systems, raising concerns for SARS-CoV-2 transmissions [15]. Therefore, the online modality perhaps reduced or buffered Black adolescents from adverse mental health outcomes influenced by their concerns about inadequate safety measures in in-person learning, SARS-CoV-2 transmission from schools to families at home, and racism-related anxiety [4, 14,15,16,17].

Consistent with previous studies of U.S. adolescents [2, 17], adolescents reporting hybrid learning reported higher levels of depressive symptomatology than those reporting in-person learning. The association did not seem to vary by race and ethnicity. The finding may reflect that hybrid learning often varies on the number of in-person and online learning days, which may increase stress from managing daily routines [2].

As we continue to live with the impacts of COVID-19, concerns will remain about the long-term effects of school modality on the mental health of adolescents. This study identified the moderating influence of race and ethnicity on the association between pandemic school modality and adolescents’ mental health, but additional research is warranted. It should also be stressed that ensuring reliable access to broadband internet and computer devices among students from minoritized ethnoracial groups must be a priority for future pandemic response efforts to avoid any learning decline or negative mental health consequences associated with lacking resources for online learning [7, 8].

Future research on how returning to in-person schooling after the pandemic impacted adolescents’ mental health and how that varied by race and ethnicity is needed to improve our understanding of the relationship between school modality and mental health among adolescents from different ethnoracial groups. These efforts can help inform ethnoracially equitable intervention strategies to support the mental well-being of children and adolescents across different learning modalities in the future.

This study has several limitations. First, responses from this English-language self-reported survey may not represent the broader U.S. adolescent population, specifically because it likely lacks perspectives from the 5 million English Learners in U.S. K-12 school systems who were disproportionately impacted by digital access gaps during the COVID-19 pandemic [18]. Second, the study lacks details on respondents’ mental health before the pandemic. Had data been available before the pandemic, we could have formally examined whether online learning buffered mental health consequences due to racist encounters in in-person learning for Black adolescents. Lastly, reliance on a cross-sectional design impedes inferring causality between school modality and mental health by race and ethnicity.

Despite these limitations, this study has implications for adolescents, families, school administrators, mental health practitioners, and policymakers. It is critically important to mitigate racial and ethnic disparities in adolescents’ mental health. Black adolescents reporting online learning reported less anxiety and depression during the pandemic. As with benefits accruing from expanding telehealth modalities [13], findings demonstrated that adopting technologies to facilitate virtual access to schools during the pandemic appears to have equity-promoting effects. Given disparities in access to broadband internet during this time, it is important to ensure resources are in place to enable any potential equity-promoting effects [8, 19]. Policymakers and mental health practitioners need to recognize the differential association between school modality and mental health by race and ethnicity rather than blanketing the positive association between in-person schooling and adolescents’ mental health and the negative association between online learning and adolescents’ mental health.

As most schools have returned to in-person learning, interventions should be explored to promote in-person school environments that better support the mental health of Black adolescents [1, 17]. Further research is needed to concretely identify the specific pathways through which online learning supported mental health and determine if benefits can be replicated across modalities. Lastly, results from this study can assist families and schools in mitigating ethnoracial disparities in adolescent mental health associated with school modality during future pandemics and even now, since online learning remains in lesson plans, at least in part.