How Covid-19 has negatively harmed teenagers through school
As we are nearing the one year mark of Covid changing day to day life I have been thinking about the past year. There is nothing surprising in saying that through this past year many teenagers have struggled more and more with their mental health.
Throughout the seven months from when school ended and then started again many people were lost and sinking. I remember how dark social media was at that time. There were so many times where I would go onto tik tok and see someone making their last meal or a final goodbye. I believe that most of those things were helped by Covid-19.
People couldn't see their friends. Others only had people to talk to at school and became completely isolated when without warning they couldn’t return. Some people went home to abusive households where they were stuck every day for months. For others there was nothing to do but stay home, alone in their thoughts. Most picture being a teenager to be going out with friends, having fun and being stress free, yet the opposite of that is what has happened.
Those first few weeks were great, it was a break that many people enjoyed and needed. But as the days dragged on people finally noticed that nothing was going to be normal anytime soon. For me I hadn’t even realized how long it had been since I had seen anyone I knew until an old friend called me in May to check in. Everyday I would see more people online who described their feelings as “slipping”, “numb”, and “being tired”. I don’t think many people understood how much they were being affected. So many more people were struggling with anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses than the months before.
Since school started I have noticed on social media people have been beginning to stay more positive and appear happier. However there are still those I have seen that have had Online school this whole time and haven’t seen or done anything fun in nearly a year. I cannot begin to imagine how terrible this last year has been for those people.
Now that many schools around the country are going fully in-person I think some will start to live normally again. It will be refreshing to have a sense of normalcy and hopefully people can start becoming “okay” again. Maybe the mental health days I know so many people rely on will start to decline. It has been hard seeing so many people struggle from things that all arose during Covid-19.
Most of the things I am talking about come from posts I have seen over Social Media. Ones where people talk about what has happened to them since last march. I didn’t dive in deep but I am writing about the hundred of teenagers I have seen who truly struggled during that time.