In March of 2020, our world completely changed over night. While everyone was worrying about the rising COVID-19 cases, the decreasing availability in hospitals, and limited numbers of medical resources, no one was paying attention to how our new world was affecting people’s mental health, especially students. As a student myself who has experienced trying to learn through a screen, I know the detrimental effects of being in isolation. Trying to teach yourself the lessons that you didn’t understand, not being able to see your friends and family, staring at a computer for hours on end, all while being isolated, takes a huge toll on you.

In my Civic Issues blog, I wanted to highlight on the upcoming epidemic of peoples’ declining mental health because of COVID-19, specifically students’ mental health. Teenagers/young adults already have so many adversities to go through during that stage of their life, from social standards to figuring out what they’re going to do for the rest of their life, COVID-19 only adds on to the stress of growing up.

In the future Civic Issues blogs, I may focus on what others can do to help students through this difficult time both at home and in school, along with how COVID-19 has affected students in other countries besides the United States.

GENERAL AMERICAN POPULATION

Out of the 334,104,170 people in the United States, 1 out of 3 Americans reported either having mental health issues because of COVID-19 or their mental illnesses worsening because of the pandemic. Boston University School of Public Health took the opportunity to dive deeper into the topic and found that “depression among adults in the United States tripled in the early 2020 months of the global coronavirus pandemic – jumping from 8.5 percent before the pandemic to a staggering 27.8 percent.” They added onto this disturbing information by continuing with “the elevated rate of depression has persisted into 2021, and even worsened, climbing to 32.8 percent.” (Boston University)

STUDENTS

Between the isolation, the uncertainty of the future, and the complete lifestyle change, students’ mental health was on a dramatic decline. Now while people of the younger generations don’t have to worry about getting severely ill from the coronavirus (unless they have underlying health conditions of course), they have to worry about other strenuous issues such as anxiety, depression, etc.

From an article written by Health Central, 20 year old Florida Gulf Coast University student, Kelly Maguire, described the emotion all students are feeling; grief. She says, “when we hear the word grief, we tend to think of the death of a loved one or somebody really close […] on top of that, there’s the grief of losing your sense of normalcy, routine, and social connections.” (Health Central)

Bestcolleges.com also created a survey for college students to take part in asking “whether they had experienced increased anxiety or depression, sadness or disappointment, higher stress levels, and other indicators of mental struggles as a result of the pandemic.” (Best Colleges) The results of the survey, created by BestColleges.com along with the graph created are as follows:

“Nearly half (46%) of respondents reported feeling more isolated and lonelier. Additionally, 40% slept less, 39% worked out less and ate worse, and close to one-third (32%) experienced feelings of hopelessness.” (Best Colleges)

In a world where you are judged based off of your grades and your education, online learning is a challenge. Learning online is exceptionally difficult because of the pressure on students, especially high school/college students. In order to get into a good college, you need to get good grades, which is hard for students living in the pandemic. When it comes to college students, classes become harder so having to teach yourself most of the material can end in confusion and lowering grades.

Online learning in my household was very difficult for my family. For me personally, the pandemic not only affected me mentally, but also physically. I have chronic migraines and one of the factors that trigger them is looking at a screen for too long. During high school when I would spend 90% of my day on Zoom, I was barely able to get through the day without ending up bedridden and in pain. This in turn created issues with my grades, which caused issues with my mental health, especially since the pandemic was going on during the last two years of high school; the most important years of my high school career. I also watched my little sister, who is a sophomore in high school, struggle tremendously with online schooling. She suffered from many illnesses, both mental and physical, that have worsened because of online school. Her physical illnesses make it hard to get out of bed and her mental illnesses make sitting on her computer on Zoom nearly impossible. The routine of getting up in the morning and physically going to school was a stress-reliever for both of us because we both had a set schedule to go through. Now with online learning, a lot of students tend to not feel motivated to get up and go to classes because they think they can just tune in from their computer at home.

SCHOOL SYSTEMS/ONLINE LEARNING

An article from “Penn Live” by Patriot-News compares the pros and cons of this new online-learning style. They explain how even though online learning does allow students to learn without putting themselves or others at risk, there are more cons that outweigh the pros.

One of the main cons that they emphasize is the shortened class times. The author of the article, Aarushi Dedhiya, states, “in my school’s hybrid learning program last year, the online classes were cut from 45-minute classes to 30-minute lessons, and we had a live-learning session only two of the five days.” (Penn Live) This connects to a previous statement that I made about how  most students after a long day of learning via Zoom are still confused and have to teach themselves most of the class material. Dedhiya agrees with this observation in her post when she says that students wouldn’t learn as much as they normally did when we were in a normal, in-person school year. She adds to that idea by saying “this impacted some students’ performance in their finals or Advanced Placement (AP) tests for that subject but also left a mark for their future.” (Penn Live) As someone who was part of the IB (International Baccalaureate) program in their school, which is very similar to AP, the shortened class periods and confusion on lessons affected how I performed on my IB tests at the end of the year, which in turn affected my entrance into Penn State.

Works Cited:

https://www.healthcentral.com/article/mental-health-effects-of-covid-19-on-students

Depression Rates in US Tripled When the Pandemic First Hit—Now, They’re Even Worse

Over 9 in 10 College Students Report Mental Health Impacts From COVID-19

https://www.pennlive.com/opinion/2022/01/covid-and-online-learning-have-changed-education-forever-youth-view.html