Although COVID-19 happened 4 years ago, it had lasting impacts on our society. On Friday, March 13th, 2020, everything shut down. People who are in high school now were in late elementary/middle school. On the other hand, kids who are in middle school this year were in their first few years of elementary school during 2020, so their COVID experience was vastly different. When we look at where these kids and teens are now, their behaviors are shocking.
In 2024, teens are almost trying to relive their childhood: collecting stuffed animals, playing on playgrounds, wearing colorful clothes, and watching cartoons are just a few.
Kids now are doing the opposite, and it is like they are trying to grow up more quickly. 10-year-olds are wearing makeup, buying more mature clothes, and being much more active on social media than before. Why is this happening?
COVID may be the problem. For a year, people were trapped in their houses during quarantine, and technology was the only way they could communicate with other people outside of their house. Teens, who were kids at the time, lost the chance to hang out with people in-person, and the end of their childhood was not well-spent. Middle schoolers now still got to normally experience the end of their childhood, and the years of online learning weren’t as impactful to them, since they were in early elementary school.
Current Sophomores couldn’t complete their 5th grade year, and they lost the ability to fully graduate elementary school. Peter Krankota, a sophomore here at LHS, agrees that 2020 was a very impactful time for him. He agrees that he lost some of his childhood because of the lockdown. He says, “It’s kind of like a big part of my life. I think that being unsocial for that time kind of gave me a slow start to being a teenager.” Krankota also reflects that he got to spend a lot of time with his friends, and he says, “I think it was for the better.” He acknowledges both the losses and gains from staying at home, and the fact that he feels he lost part of his childhood due to COVID. This could be the reason for why teens are trying to relive childhood memories, to maybe gain back what they lost. In this sense, teens have also almost been forced to grow up fast, because they were rushed into middle school and forced to adapt to a new chapter in their lives.
On the other hand, LHS Early High Schooler Jakobi Prince is in 8th grade this year. He was in 3rd grade when he had to leave school due to the Coronavirus, and he experienced online learning very differently than the LHS Sophomore. He says that he didn’t feel like he missed too much of his childhood during COVID, and it didn’t emotionally affect him that much, although he didn’t hang out with people as much. Although, 2020 wasn’t as big of a change for him, because he wasn’t transitioning schools or anything that forced him to quickly adapt to something new.
Older kids were forced to grow up too fast, and younger kids followed their actions by acting older than their age now. It’s shocking to see how this is happening after 2020, and how the Coronavirus really turned our world upside down, even though it’s been 4 years.
