Among the laundry list of health problems COVID has inflicted on the world's population, one of the more perplexing could be an increase in the number of girls experiencing what is known as idiopathic precocious puberty – abnormally early onset of puberty.

"We have found that blue light exposure, sufficient to alter melatonin levels, is also able to alter reproductive hormone levels and cause earlier puberty onset in our rat model.

Though far from a slam-dunk on the case of why more girls around the world might have hit puberty when they did during the pandemic, it's a finding that should be taken seriously as we become increasingly reliant on personalized digital technology.

So when the number of girls reporting an idiopathic form of precocious puberty in Turkey jumped from 25 in April 2019 to 58 in March 2020, researchers were stumped, proposing anything from high calorie foods to the fear of the pandemic might be to blame.

"As this a rat study, we can't be sure that these findings would be replicated in children but these data suggest that blue light exposure could be considered as a risk factor for earlier puberty onset," says Uğurlu.