The last two years of school are considered to be the last two years of your childhood. At 16, you have two years before you become an ‘adult’ and go to college or get a job. These two years are when you spend time with your friends, explore your passions and begin to discover who you are.
The pandemic has done much more than disrupt the graduation ceremonies of school students worldwide; it has shaken up our entire lives.
One’s teenage years are already a stressful time: you are figuring out social dynamics, working on college applications and trying to develop an identity. For any given student right now, there are two main areas from which you can derive stress.
The first is the general situation around us – the pandemic. This is not unique to teenagers as almost everyone is feeling fear for the safety of their friends and family, and everyone is growing tired of the isolation and developing feelings of loneliness. However, I believe the feelings of loneliness are compounded within high schoolers. As teenagers, having a strong and trusted social circle around you is very important. This is because you need a group of people your age that you can confide in. It is much more difficult to make and maintain friendships during lockdown and this also has a negative impact on the mental health of students.
Secondly, and more specifically, students also have the wonderful world of school to worry about. One in two high schoolers in the UK, and more than 61% of students in the US, attribute academic performance and concerns about school to be a factor in the worsening of their mental health.
Lockdowns have made school much more stressful. This is because academic pressure is exponentially greater when you are attending online classes from home. Schoolwork becomes much more difficult when it is less engaging in a format where you rarely see your peers and teachers. It is much more difficult to ask questions and forge connections with your peers and teachers; connections which help when you need to talk to someone about a problem you are facing or when you need to ask for an extension on a particularly stressful project.
Also read: The Truth About Your Teen’s Mental Health
Students are also more likely to be distracted when studying from home – many students don’t have the luxury of dedicated study spaces and would have to try and focus on school with all the distractions of home in the background. Additionally, many social media apps and websites are addictive and it is much more difficult to avoid them when you are not in a dedicated academic setting and the apps are always present at your fingertips.
While some may argue that the presence of online school adds to flexibility of deadlines and a smaller workload for many students, this is not the case. On the one hand, this is dependent on teachers being empathetic and handing out extensions. But more perniciously, many students are forced to bite off more than they can chew due to college applications. College applications act as a force that drives students to try and take more challenging courses and do more co-curricular activities. While in a normal world this may be a positive outcome that leads to well-rounded students (debatable), in the world of pandemics and quarantine this just leads to increased stress and competition when what students really need is the ability to take a step back and breathe.
College applications become much more difficult when exams are continually postponed, when you can’t write standardised tests, and when the stress of quarantine harms your grades. In a world where students are already always stressing about college applications, the pandemic did nothing to help.
Additionally, it is important to keep school and home separate. Students who may feel unsafe or stressed out by the environment at home may look at school as a safe space. But for many students, home is a place of rest and recharge that is separate from the stress of school. Introducing school to your home may feel like it is invading what was previously a separate environment where you could keep your academic worries aside. Sure, you have homework but the stress from homework is much less than the stress from having your entire school day online in your room.
School now has become an endless cycle of waking up and staring at a computer screen, doing homework and worrying about your grades. At the very least, in physical school, one would be able to laugh and joke with friends between classes, and take a break and revitalise at a lunch table with your volleyball teammates midday.
It is important to remember that poor mental health has tangible impacts on our lives. The impacts range from heart disease and weakened immune systems. In fact, 16% of college students in the US claiming that the pandemic has led to suicidal thoughts.
In such times, it is vital that we make the effort to reach out to people – be it friends, family or a professional. It is also important to listen when someone reaches out to us. Being mindful of the comments you make in stressful times like these and striving to be more empathetic helps create a more positive environment, something we all could do with a bit more of during this pandemic.
Thej Mallu is currently a student at CHIREC International, Hyderabad. His passions are rooted in public health, blogging (at thejmallu.wordpress.com), and debating, having represented India at the world championships before.
Featured image credit:愚木混株 Cdd20/Pixabay