Though it’s often talked about quite flippantly, a concussion is more concerning thank you might have been led to believe.

Over the course of their childhoods, it is estimated that around 7% of children will have suffered a concussion, with boys slightly more likely to have been concussed than girls.

Though children generally recover just fine, it’s worth understanding that a concussion is a kind of traumatic brain injury (TBI).

And new research from a group of doctors and scientists from Finland – recently published in the European Journal of Epidemiology – proves that the long-term impacts of a concussion during childhood may be more serious than we previously knew.

This is thanks to data collected from young people across Finland that suggests that after just one concussion during childhood, a person is 15% less likely to follow a pathway into higher education.

In the study, the team compared data from patients who were treated in hospital for a TBI (anything from a mild concussion to a more severe brain injury) with the records from patients who had instead been treated for limb injuries including sprains and broken bones.

Of the 136,828 TBI patients, only 24,039 of these once concussed children went to college. In the comparative data, it was found that this made TBI patients 15% less likely to go to college than orthopaedic patients, suggesting that this childhood injury to the brain could impact the individual’s life prospects, as the study’s authors note:

“People with pTBI had lower educational attainment at all higher educational levels than the reference population with ankle and wrist injuries.”

And given our lack of understanding about the seriousness of concussion, these results are concerning.

And it seems like the impacts of brain injuries are something of a sliding scale when it comes to their effects of a child’s education.

The researchers found that while those who were concussed once were less likely to progress in education after they’d completed high school, the authors explained that this correlation was amplified when it came to more severe brain injuries:

“Patients with specific intracranial injuries were more likely not to attain any tertiary education compared to patients with concussions.”

In fact, those who had experienced more severe or debilitating brain injuries were 22% less likely to study at a higher level than their once concussed counterparts.

As a result of these seemingly decreased life chances, the researchers urge an awareness among parents, physicians and educators:

“For future monitoring of pTBI patients. it is important to pay attention to the possible long-term negative cognitive impact that can lead to lower educational attainment.”

This all just underscores the importance of taking head injuries seriously.

If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about 50 amazing finds on Google Earth.