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Teens' mental health did surprisingly well in quarantine

154 points by pgcj_poster 6y ago

heladakilioohug 6y ago
of course they did because their families has gone crazy already!
_pmf_ 6y ago
Not having to go into the eternal toxic hell that is school for a lot of boys, I can see how quarantine is attractive.
- daitangio 6y ago
  Yeah but please let pass a bit more time...I think is too early to say mental health is ok
  - marketingPro 6y ago
    I took a second to think about how I'd respond to a survey that asked these questions. I'd lie. I don't want to get singled out for home abuse or bullies. There are people that have it worse. And having to talk to people that are powerless to remove bullies is a huge mental drain.
- wwright 6y ago
  How is school only toxic for boys?
  - watwut 6y ago
    It is possible that op school had different social issues among boys then among girls. It is possible that op had no experience with girl-on-girl interactions while having bad experiences with boy-on-boy interactions.
    - xiphias2 6y ago
      Still, girls need more social interactions than boys in general, as the mental issues are different. According to other research boys are coping mentally better with COVID than girls.
      - watwut 6y ago
        Then again, boys had more social interactions during lockdown due to online gaming being way more prevalent among boys. For many boys, they kept gaming and thus socializing largely as before. Girls social was more in person or composed of general "keeping in touch" and not much was happening to talk about. I purposefully shown some online games to my daughters so they can socialize with friends. But looking around, it was quite exceptional move for parent of girls. They had more schoolmate boys playing with them although they normally socialize more with girls. And some of those girls were the ones I told the parents about the option. I did not asked single boy to join, they were already gaming.
    - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
      I had to read a couple of books about teen girl psychology to understand just how badly teen girls bully and mistreat each other. It was a real eye-opener. But then the bullying never really goes away for either gender. It's disguised and legitimised as various commercial, professional, political, and social activities, but the motivations are similar - just more covert.
      - watwut 6y ago
        But it is not like every single female group had massive bullying problem. Just like there are plenty of boy groups who don't bully each other. This is like saying "I had no idea how severely boys beat or insult each other". It is absolutely true that such problem exists among boys. But you still have a lot of groups where boys don't beat each other.
      - kcolford 6y ago
        What books if I might ask?
  - kuu 6y ago
    Maybe he's not a native speaker and he's interchanging boys for children/kids.
    - dubcanada 6y ago
      That's my guess, based on his comment history he's not native.
  - NateEag 6y ago
    OP didn't say it was only toxic for boys, just that it is for a lot of them. He may have been referring to research that suggests girls generally cope better with the American school system's structure and approach than boys: https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/06/stop-penalizing-boys-for-not-being-able-to-sit-still-at-school/276976/ https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/06/stop-penal...
    - noetokyo 6y ago
      Yet. Teenage girls have a depression rate that has been rapidly increasing through the years. Currently at 20%. Which would suggest the increase in the use of social media is the main cause. Especially when this study did nothing to correlate against it with its weak argument for sleep which if you look at statistics on depression had no effect on it.
  - Minor49er 6y ago
    I took this to mean that he was referring to his own experience of being a boy and going to school.
- marketingPro 6y ago
  I think you will have bullies in every situation. Had to deal with them in sports too.
- collyw 6y ago
  Change gender, try life on easy mode instead.
- francisofascii 6y ago
  My friend and I were recently discussing how both our middle school kids seem much happier since the lockdown. We speculated it is stressful to be constantly trying to appear cool and normal in the school environment several hours a day, especially for introverted kids who have no break to be alone and recharge.
- burntoutfire 6y ago
  School is tough for sure, but it can be seen as a place to learn coping strategies against shitty people. In remote learning (or homeschooling), kids are sheltered from these problems until later in life, where they have to compete against much higher baseline level of competency and in situations where stakes are higher. So, maybe school is bad, but no school is worse?
o_class_star 6y ago
I'm a bit older, but I found as well that my mental health didn't fare as bad as I'd feared it would when I first figured out (February) how bad this thing was going to be. In the 2010s, corporate capitalism seemed eternal and unassailable. Dysfunctional, yes, but geared toward entrenchment and self-acceleration (fascism) rather than collapse. COVID-19 proved corporate capitalism invalid. I would have rather seen socialism succeed than capitalism fail and certain I wish we hadn't had to see over a million people die because of our economic system, but nevertheless, this is an opportunity for the left. Universal basic income is now a mainstream position. Trump, who would have probably be winning if COVID-19 hadn't happened, is now the underdog. I feel a lot of sympathy for people who are, for the first time in their life, experiencing mental distress, serious ill-health, and disability. I don't mean to understate that. I'm not happy that COVID-19 happened, and I don't think anyone is. For me, though, the uncertainty has kept me going. There's a lot to be afraid of, but there's also cause for hope. It is now not merely a growing sentiment but common knowledge that our economic elite must be overthrown, no matter the cost.
- OneGuy123 6y ago
  Some form of universal basic income will be sooner or later needed. The question is how do we get there without becoming Venezuela and eating rats.
  - o_class_star 6y ago
    Venezuela was done-in by so-called "Dutch disease"-- over-reliance on natural resource extraction, including subsidies for gasoline that made it nearly free-- and Chavez's corruption. He allowed his buddies to buy dollars at the "official" exchange rate which was 4 orders of magnitude out of line with the market rate. Flat-out robbery of the Venezuelan people. Corporate capitalism is theft, but that doesn't mean all socialists are good or that no socialists are thieves.
    - Broken_Hippo 6y ago
      Very much this. And don't forget, Venezuela isn't really led by folks that care about their people nor do the elections seem free or fair. I think one of the real issues in doing socialist policies in the US is that the US's level of corruption and lack of care for other folks (at a government level) is more reminiscent of Venezuela and other corrupt regimes - and has been for years. There is not much trust in government and government doesn't seem keen on building such a thing. We could go and base things more off of Nordic nations, but it is going to require more transparency, front-facing government that simply works without punishing people for not being perfect, and some major trust-building. (Initiatives like the reworking of the Indiana DMV are in order: I no longer hated the DMV there, and it can be even better with some work). We don't necessarily need any of this for some socialist policies, such as health care. There are plenty of examples around the globe we can source from to customize it to our population. We can make the tax code easier for average people in most situations to deal with as well simply to remove some friction.
notRobot 6y ago
I volunteer with a lot of high-school kids, and from what I've seen, they've been okay for the most part when it comes to mental health, except for those who have toxic families and who use school as an escape (to get out of the house, recharge, etc.). For those kids, it's been really, really hard. :(
- marketingPro 6y ago
  When I first heard the home abuse story I shivered because I had a mere mild version as a late teenager. I literally trained for a marathon because that meant 2-4 hours/day away from the house. The only good that came out of it was that I studied so freaking hard so I could get a job and move out. There was no empathy for this demographic, but lots of empathy for 70+ year olds.
  - microcolonel 6y ago
    > There was no empathy for this demographic, but lots of empathy for 70+ year olds. There was lots of empathy for young people, including from those 70+ folks; it's just the narrative can not sustain on a diet of empathy. In the places where lockdowns have been both draconian and ineffective, the priority is more to give the impression that the politicians are "doing something", not to seek a good outcome on a balance of opportunities taken and missed.
  - tomjen3 6y ago
    For the longest time the lockdown was pretty much screwing over young people for the benefit of old people. Now I am not in the US, but I do wonder if so much would have been shutdown if it had been young people who died, like it was in 1920.
    - kazagistar 6y ago
      Screwing over young people for the benefit of old people is kinda the norm. But at least in this case it's justified because it's literally millions of lives on the line. Its just hard for the young people to empathize sometimes given how much they are screwed over economically and environmentally constantly.
noetokyo 6y ago
Oh man this is great. This is basically saying what every other scientific paper has been saying for years. The decrease in the usage of social media led to a decrease in depression in teenagers. It's almost like facebook and instagram are inherently toxic by design and should not exist. To further clarify a 15% rate of depression in teens is higher than it was in 2017. The article lists in their survey for families who were well off during the pandemic still 15% which is really high. And 33% for those who were not. The fact the article ignores that fact is concerning to me. And makes this seem like a piece trying to claim social media isn't as "bad" as it seems. Claiming that sleep was beneficial for teens. When it in fact is suggestive otherwise that it is negligible.
- pgrote 6y ago
  > toxic by design and should not exist I have the same opinion; there are like three of us. They are failed experiments and need to end. There is no fixing them at this point and society is worse due to what they've become.
  - collyw 6y ago
    "Social media was a mistake and the creators should be tried for crimes against humanity" Anon, 4chan
    - phone8675309 6y ago
      I always find this stance on 4chan amusing since 4chan is also social media. Just anonymous social media.
      - flyingfences 6y ago
        In my mind, that anonymity is what makes 4chan _not_ "social media" -- the "social" aspect is eliminated. When nobody is identifiable, the conversation necessarily becomes an exchange solely upon the content of the posts [1], not about the people posting. This distinguishes it from sites like Facebook and Twitter where identity is central to the discussion no matter how you try to ignore it and also from pseudonymous sites like Reddit and traditional forums where a person doesn't necessarily have a "real" identity tied to their post but does have an established identity, where other posters can see and bring up somebody's posting history. On a truly anonymous platform like 4chan, the only thing you can possibly know about the people you're talking to is what they've said in that one thread -- all other aspects of their identity are unavailable and irrelevant. [1] (and, unfortunately, projections and inferences and ad-hominems...)
DavidSJ 6y ago
One plausible explanation: school is as bad for teens' mental health as quarantine, so going from one to the other has been a wash.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  Well, duh. You have to ask someone to use the bathroom. A typical office is stocked with snacks and drinks. You can step away for a walk. We treat kids in school way worse than adults in the white collar working world (we basically treat them like blue collar workers).
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    Blue collar workers... surrounded by sociopaths with incompletely developed impulse control and self reflection.
  - enditruu 6y ago
    The fact that there are teachers out there who will sometimes just refuse to allow kids to go to the bathroom is just insane. What good does treating students like that actually bring?
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      At least in my urban high school experience, some teachers were of about equal maturity level to their students. Also, students would go to the bathroom and then just not come back and roam the halls and enter random classrooms and say hi to all of their friends in the middle of class.
      - srtjstjsj 6y ago
        And why do kids do that? Either because school is miserable and/or because saying hello to a friend isn't a moral travesty
        6y ago
marketingPro 6y ago
The first people I saw to break quarantine laws were teens who met up at the park, then went to someone's house to play basketball. No school + get to see your friends? Yeah I can see that being good for mental health.. My 29 year old single male friends? Multiple told me they were going to try to get anti depressants. They refused to link it to the quarantine (politically they were in full support of the quarentine). And me? Unemployment with my 1 year old was fun for 3 months. By month 5, the kid learned how to rule the household. I'm so glad I'm hired and the kid is in daycare.
- asdff 6y ago
  In march in LA kids basically dropped off the face of the earth in terms of schooling. Parks were closed, but they were playing full court basketball at my local park anyway since march to right now, at the same levels as before the pandemic, with spectators in the bleachers too. Basically teenage summer came early and has been going on for 7 months now.
- vbezhenar 6y ago
  It’s feels good to be an asocial nerd. Like nothing really changed for me.
  - op00to 6y ago
    I constantly battle with my partner because I’m perfectly happy holing Up at home until a vaccine but my partner demands outings and family visits aplenty.
aaron695 6y ago
It's an exciting fun time. It's also less stressful, it's ok to skip stuff. Results don't matter as much. Next year when some of their parents are still unemployed, expectations back, but some kids will be further behind. Everything that seems to matter now will be forgotten. That's when I'd expect to start seeing them top themselves at an increased demographic level.
- derptron 6y ago
  Exciting and fun? If you're a sociopath.
scandox 6y ago
Well looking out my window that's because they're having a whale of a time and I I haven't the heart to blame them really. They're roaming the streets here like a herd of frisky wildebeest.
- asdff 6y ago
  Summer 2020 is infinite.
nikk1 6y ago
The unintended consequence of the pandemic is that teenagers are getting more sleep, who now don't have to commute to school to start class at 7 am. Maybe this is a case for high schools to continue to teach classes online (or maybe partially online), even after the pandemic?
- collyw 6y ago
  I do feel there is a bit more to school that just lessons, being able to function socially is a large part of that.
- noetokyo 6y ago
  Though that is an interesting topic. The data doesnt suggest that sleep had any effect on the depression rates of teens.
  - falcor84 6y ago
    Could you please link to any studies where this was examined?
    - noetokyo 6y ago
      Sorry, I think you are mistaking what I'm writing. I'm referring to this article and basing it of PEW Research on adolescence with depression. The addition of more sleep hasn't changed anything in this survey. In regards to already existing reports by PEW on the rates of depression which in teenagers and in more specifically girls have an exponential growth in depression rates. Its not due to a change in social stigma but rather the use of social media. Specifically facebook and instagram which most teenage girls spend the majority of their time on.
  - nikk1 6y ago
    Sleep impacts all aspects of health, including mental health, of all age groups.
  - nradov 6y ago
    Sleep deprivation is actually an effective treatment for many cases of depression. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-sleep-deprivation-eases-depression/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-sleep-depriva...
gilrain 6y ago
Politically in support of quarantine? It's established medical science. That we're at a point where epidemiology is political is truly worrying. Donald Trump learned that ignoring science doesn't make it go away to his detriment; I really hope others will take note and follow prevailing medical advice to keep themselves and their loved ones safe, rather than pretending it's political.
- nsxwolf 6y ago
  You can accept the science that a quarantine prevents disease from spreading. You can also take the stance that the quarantine isn't worth it. Not mutually exclusive ideas.
  - bryanlarsen 6y ago
    The problem with that stance is that you're taking it on faith that the economy will do better without a quarantine than with one. A large number of sick and dead people and the fear of such will destroy an economy, quarantine or not. https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-sweden-gdp-falls-8pc-in-q2-worse-nordic-neighbors-2020-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-sweden-gdp-falls...
    - frockington1 6y ago
      I think its pretty clear that places where the economy shut down longer are affected more, at least in the US. In the midwest where I live everything is almost back to normal, Main difference is you have to put a piece of cotton over your face when you walk into a bar. Housing market is still strong and jobs are to be had. Meanwhile NYC and other shut down areas are seeing an exodus of the wealthy
      - kazagistar 6y ago
        Its not over yet. I live in a rural area and we are seeing the worst spike yet.
      - 6y ago
blaser-waffle 6y ago
My nephews were mostly playing Battle Royale-type shooters 24/7 well before COVID. Now they don't even have to leave the house. The 18 year old was multi-tasking his Eve Online account + school Zoom meetings. I've been remote like ~5 years and was impressed.
- duskwuff 6y ago
  > The 18 year old was multi-tasking his Eve Online account + school Zoom meetings. I've been remote like ~5 years and was impressed. Hey, at least school is teaching him some important life skills!
speeder 6y ago
In my country this wouldn't surprise me at all. School system here is basically hell, they picked the worst parts of USA and EU styles of education and mixed them into some kind of unholy beast designed to break children. Here many schools have the building literally designed after prisons, something that kids DO pick up (the most important school in my town had the nickname when I was teenager, of "Cadeião", that means "big jail", a nickname also used to refer to supermax prisons). Although we don't get a ton of mass shootings like USA, non-mass shootings are normal (and mind you, in a country where guns are banned... people still find a way to get guns anyway, also axes, knives, etc... we had a "mass axing" here...), violence between not just students, but students and teachers. Much of this I suspect is because my country is one of the few ones in the world where homeschooling is 100% illegal, with no exceptions, attempting homeschool here is a serious crime that results in the parents being arrested and the kids sent to orphanage, so you have schools full of kids that DO NOT want to be there, ever, so they focus their time on making life hell for everybody around them, hoping that maybe someday, people will kick them out of the system (but they won't, because it is illegal). About EU vs USA vs Brazil schooling system: I lost the excellent article I read about it years ago, but basically in USA the students can choose what classes they want, this including theoretically let them switch what classes their are going if they want to avoid a certain student. Meanwhile in Europe the classes are fixed, everyone go to same classes, but in many places you can choose the curriculum, so if you want to be an engineer for example you can pick an engineering focused curriculum, classes will be fixed, and all students you see every day won't chance, but you will learn more about what you want. In Brazil the government decided somehow, that the best path was not choose anything, all schools have same curriculum, all university entry exams are obligated to ask some mininum about subjects even if they are irrelevant (ie: if you are offering a physics course, you still need to ask literature questions in your entry exam), you can't choose time, can't choose curriculum, nothing. Basically you go to school when it opens, stick with same students even if they hate your guts, see the same subjects as everyone else, even if they are completely irrelevant, and then you go home, and you keep repeating this until you have to get into a university, when you then have to take a government-ran test (that often includes propaganda) and whatever test that the universities you want to enter have, such test must ask along whatever the university wants to know, also some questions about subjects the government wants all universities to ask to all students, no matter if it is completely irrelevant or useless for their lives.
rossdavidh 6y ago
So, I like to think of myself as not overly protective, but fairly early on in the pandemic, during the actual shelter-in-place part, my teenage daughter said, "It's not like anything has really changed for me all that much". Ouch. She watched more TV, and via Zoom got to see what everybody else's living rooms looked like, but in the U.S. most professional class kids don't get a lot of free-roaming time anyway, so the only difference is you're trading school time (never their favorite part) for house time. So I'm not sure this means quarantine isn't so bad, more like we have kids in quarantine all the time nowadays compared to a generation ago so it wasn't much of a change.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  Isn’t sport massively important in US schools, and for getting into college? That must have been a big change not being able to go to ‘practice’ and all their clubs?
  - helen___keller 6y ago
    > Isn’t sport massively important in US schools? For the kids involved in sports, sure. That's not all kids.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      Ah kind of assumed it was mandatory for all children to have a sport or club in the US - films and articles about college admission make it look so.
      - davewashere 6y ago
        Athletics is one way high schoolers with less than stellar academic records can navigate past college admissions departments and get accepted at a school where they might not otherwise be qualified. Most people already knew this about scholarship athletes, but the recent college admissions scandal involved non-athletes being listed by college coaches as recruited athletes. It's basically the coach telling the admissions department that this student might play on their team and therefore should get preferential treatment with admissions.
jdlyga 6y ago
There was no FOMO because everyone was in quarantine too. A lot of times you were quarantined with your parents, so you have your family to support you.
fcatalan 6y ago
My kids are a bit younger, but the article reads a lot like our life during the hard quarantine period in Spain. They couldn't set a foot out of the door for 52 straight days and only walk around the block for a few more weeks, but they adapted perfectly, slept more, never were bored or sad, did great with their remote school tasks, enjoyed the extended family time and even had a fun and instructive peek into adult work life: they were surprisingly insightful and critical about the good and bad aspects of mom&dad jobs. And while the reason for it was bad and my wife and me were worried, anxious and sleepless, in retrospect our life was good in a lot of ways: The kids were OK, we ate better, we exercised, work got done beyond expectations, we had more free time and discovered that many of the disagreements and tensions in our marriage come from the outside. Being together 24/7 was easier than getting along living the usual crazy "normal life".
torgian 6y ago
Great, but if there was enforced quarantine for a month or two, we’d be fine by now. Too bad this is going to last a lot longer...
qwerty456127 6y ago
As a child I really loved being left at home, preferably alone, for as long as possible. So I can have no doubt there are many children who actually enjoy a lock-down. Introverts are real and introvert children can do even better (than adults) entertaining themselves at home.
hammock 6y ago
What do you mean "did"? We are still in quarantine. I cannot visit Europe. My friends won't hang out with me. Etc
kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
1. School times are way too early for most teens. I am sure that just not having to get up that soon is doing a lot for their overall wellbeing. 2. American high-schools are some of the most toxic environments you could ever be in, and would give the most "hostile workplaces" a run for their money. They suck for the nerdy kid who wants to be left to his / her own devices. They suck for the middling kids who don't want to be on the perpetual status treadmill.
- baxtr 6y ago
  Trust me, high schools outside of the US as well. There’s something about that age span that is very exciting but aggravating at the same time. I am happy for me that I passed without major injuries, physical and mental.
  - kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
    Teens are horrible across the world, but some cultures manage school life a bit better (of course, probably with some other trade-offs). Indians (and Chinese too I think) for example, generally have some amount of implicit respect for 'education' (there is a goddess of learning and education in India) and for teachers. Parents-from-hell exist but at least when I was growing up, discipline was expected, teachers were given the benefit of doubt instead of always siding with the kids, kids actually used to be somewhat scared of teachers and the principal (I mean sure they would make fun of them behind their back but at least there was some amount of deference to authority) and the overall environment kept kids in line. The kind of bullying that passes for normal in American schools would never fly. I mean it doesn't fly in American workplaces either. It's the kind of bullshit we only tolerate in schools for some reason.
    - thaumasiotes 6y ago
      > Indians (and Chinese too I think) for example, generally have some amount of implicit respect for 'education' (there is a goddess of learning and education in India) and for teachers. I can confirm this is true of Chinese.
Shivetya 6y ago
Considering just my own observations they did well because for the most part many of them totally ignored any of the quarantine advice that was given out an only were impacted by it when establishments they frequent were closed or enforced rules. If anything it drove more gatherings at each others homes. I have seen an entire wrestling team at homes along with parents around. Seems there was this super brief restraint that suddenly blew out especially when so many didn't want to be inhibited.
mytailorisrich 6y ago
When I was a teen it would have been very hard. Basically nothing but TV and a landline (and calls "aren't free" as per my parents). But, as a parent myself now, I can see that my children have stayed in contact with their friends almost continuously with text messaging and audio and video calls. I think that technology has been a tremendous help. Even school continued remotely on its normal schedule. As others have mentioned, this also allowed more pupils to sleep until later in the morning, which was probably a good thing as well, though obviously the level of physical exercise plummeted.
deleted 6y ago
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tehjoker 6y ago
This is an odd finding to me. The CDC found that of 18-24 year olds surveyed June 24-30, one in four seriously considered suicide within the past thirty days. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6932a1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6932a1.htm Discussion by Glenn Greenwald: https://theintercept.com/2020/08/28/the-social-fabric-of-the-u-s-is-fraying-severely-if-not-unravelling/ https://theintercept.com/2020/08/28/the-social-fabric-of-the... I find it somewhat incredible that the results would be going essentially in opposite directions so close in age range.
- kortilla 6y ago
  It shouldn’t be that surprising. The change in the way your life is structured and how you are treated by society drastically changes after high school.
  - tehjoker 6y ago
    That's true, but these kid's parents aren't doing so hot. I'm a little incredulous that this stress isn't being transmitted.
- nobody9999 6y ago
  >I find it somewhat incredible that the results would be going essentially in opposite directions so close in age range. I wonder if the kids studied were more from higher socio-economic strata than the median. The methodology section of the appendix to the study linked[0] by the Atlantic article is vague on socio-economic status. Since many of those who are on the high end have had significantly less disruption than those on the lower end. If the sample was skewed toward the higher end of the spectrum, perhaps that could account for the results. [0] https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/final-teenquarantine2020.pdf https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/final-teenquaranti... Edit: Included the missing link.
02020202 6y ago
..except those who offed themselves.
kryogen1c 6y ago
wtf?! why is the headline photo an upskirt shot? regardless of your opinion on how young is too young (these girls are too young), a professional news outlet shouldnt photograph peoples underwear up a skirt. am i crazy/too old? no one else?
macjohnmcc 6y ago
Being an introvert as a teen my experience would not have changed much except less exposure to people at school I didn't really interact with anyway.
p1mrx 6y ago
Why is this article written in the past tense? Is the pandemic over and everyone forgot to tell me?
- adrianmonk 6y ago
  Maybe it's just because the article refers to a specific study that surveyed teens from May to July. It's probably hard to make a concise headline that is true to that limitation and also conveys that the pandemic isn't over.
adrianmonk 6y ago
> survey of 1,523 U.S. teens from May to July this year Given that, I would take this with a grain of salt. Half of that time is summer, when teens normally aren't in school anyway. So if being able to socialize with friends and peers is an important part of teens' mental health (I think it is), then this study doesn't really cover that very well. Also, July was a few months ago. It's possible things get worse over the long haul.
m0zg 6y ago
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." -- Hunter S. Thompson. My 16 y.o. son is not struggling with quarantine at all, but his education is taking a massive nosedive - something he's not yet mature enough to worry about. So yeah, mental health-wise he's fine. Education-wise he's in a bit of a pickle. I say "a bit" because we've been supplementing his education with STEM tutoring for the past 3 years or so, which is not something poorer people can afford to do. _Those_ kids are fucked like you wouldn't believe. I think we'd be better off canceling the entire school year, furloughing all teachers, and keeping kids in the same grade for the time being.
somerandomboi 6y ago
High school is a complete hell-hole full of warring social factions. I wouldn't be surprised if people didn't try to physically decimate each other when in-person classes return.
polyacr 6y ago
How well can the mental health of the depictured teenagers be, when they're doing their picnic out in the open with mask on their faces? Does not look "mentally well" to me.

154 points by pgcj_poster 6y ago

heladakilioohug 6y ago

of course they did because their families has gone crazy already!

_pmf_ 6y ago

Not having to go into the eternal toxic hell that is school for a lot of boys, I can see how quarantine is attractive.

daitangio 6y ago
Yeah but please let pass a bit more time...I think is too early to say mental health is ok
- marketingPro 6y ago
  I took a second to think about how I'd respond to a survey that asked these questions. I'd lie. I don't want to get singled out for home abuse or bullies. There are people that have it worse. And having to talk to people that are powerless to remove bullies is a huge mental drain.
wwright 6y ago
How is school only toxic for boys?
- watwut 6y ago
  It is possible that op school had different social issues among boys then among girls. It is possible that op had no experience with girl-on-girl interactions while having bad experiences with boy-on-boy interactions.
  - xiphias2 6y ago
    Still, girls need more social interactions than boys in general, as the mental issues are different. According to other research boys are coping mentally better with COVID than girls.
    - watwut 6y ago
      Then again, boys had more social interactions during lockdown due to online gaming being way more prevalent among boys. For many boys, they kept gaming and thus socializing largely as before. Girls social was more in person or composed of general "keeping in touch" and not much was happening to talk about. I purposefully shown some online games to my daughters so they can socialize with friends. But looking around, it was quite exceptional move for parent of girls. They had more schoolmate boys playing with them although they normally socialize more with girls. And some of those girls were the ones I told the parents about the option. I did not asked single boy to join, they were already gaming.
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    I had to read a couple of books about teen girl psychology to understand just how badly teen girls bully and mistreat each other. It was a real eye-opener. But then the bullying never really goes away for either gender. It's disguised and legitimised as various commercial, professional, political, and social activities, but the motivations are similar - just more covert.
    - watwut 6y ago
      But it is not like every single female group had massive bullying problem. Just like there are plenty of boy groups who don't bully each other. This is like saying "I had no idea how severely boys beat or insult each other". It is absolutely true that such problem exists among boys. But you still have a lot of groups where boys don't beat each other.
    - kcolford 6y ago
      What books if I might ask?
- kuu 6y ago
  Maybe he's not a native speaker and he's interchanging boys for children/kids.
  - dubcanada 6y ago
    That's my guess, based on his comment history he's not native.
- NateEag 6y ago
  OP didn't say it was only toxic for boys, just that it is for a lot of them. He may have been referring to research that suggests girls generally cope better with the American school system's structure and approach than boys: https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/06/stop-penalizing-boys-for-not-being-able-to-sit-still-at-school/276976/ https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/06/stop-penal...
  - noetokyo 6y ago
    Yet. Teenage girls have a depression rate that has been rapidly increasing through the years. Currently at 20%. Which would suggest the increase in the use of social media is the main cause. Especially when this study did nothing to correlate against it with its weak argument for sleep which if you look at statistics on depression had no effect on it.
- Minor49er 6y ago
  I took this to mean that he was referring to his own experience of being a boy and going to school.
marketingPro 6y ago
I think you will have bullies in every situation. Had to deal with them in sports too.
collyw 6y ago
Change gender, try life on easy mode instead.
francisofascii 6y ago
My friend and I were recently discussing how both our middle school kids seem much happier since the lockdown. We speculated it is stressful to be constantly trying to appear cool and normal in the school environment several hours a day, especially for introverted kids who have no break to be alone and recharge.
burntoutfire 6y ago
School is tough for sure, but it can be seen as a place to learn coping strategies against shitty people. In remote learning (or homeschooling), kids are sheltered from these problems until later in life, where they have to compete against much higher baseline level of competency and in situations where stakes are higher. So, maybe school is bad, but no school is worse?

o_class_star 6y ago

I'm a bit older, but I found as well that my mental health didn't fare as bad as I'd feared it would when I first figured out (February) how bad this thing was going to be. In the 2010s, corporate capitalism seemed eternal and unassailable. Dysfunctional, yes, but geared toward entrenchment and self-acceleration (fascism) rather than collapse. COVID-19 proved corporate capitalism invalid. I would have rather seen socialism succeed than capitalism fail and certain I wish we hadn't had to see over a million people die because of our economic system, but nevertheless, this is an opportunity for the left. Universal basic income is now a mainstream position. Trump, who would have probably be winning if COVID-19 hadn't happened, is now the underdog. I feel a lot of sympathy for people who are, for the first time in their life, experiencing mental distress, serious ill-health, and disability. I don't mean to understate that. I'm not happy that COVID-19 happened, and I don't think anyone is. For me, though, the uncertainty has kept me going. There's a lot to be afraid of, but there's also cause for hope. It is now not merely a growing sentiment but common knowledge that our economic elite must be overthrown, no matter the cost.

OneGuy123 6y ago
Some form of universal basic income will be sooner or later needed. The question is how do we get there without becoming Venezuela and eating rats.
- o_class_star 6y ago
  Venezuela was done-in by so-called "Dutch disease"-- over-reliance on natural resource extraction, including subsidies for gasoline that made it nearly free-- and Chavez's corruption. He allowed his buddies to buy dollars at the "official" exchange rate which was 4 orders of magnitude out of line with the market rate. Flat-out robbery of the Venezuelan people. Corporate capitalism is theft, but that doesn't mean all socialists are good or that no socialists are thieves.
  - Broken_Hippo 6y ago
    Very much this. And don't forget, Venezuela isn't really led by folks that care about their people nor do the elections seem free or fair. I think one of the real issues in doing socialist policies in the US is that the US's level of corruption and lack of care for other folks (at a government level) is more reminiscent of Venezuela and other corrupt regimes - and has been for years. There is not much trust in government and government doesn't seem keen on building such a thing. We could go and base things more off of Nordic nations, but it is going to require more transparency, front-facing government that simply works without punishing people for not being perfect, and some major trust-building. (Initiatives like the reworking of the Indiana DMV are in order: I no longer hated the DMV there, and it can be even better with some work). We don't necessarily need any of this for some socialist policies, such as health care. There are plenty of examples around the globe we can source from to customize it to our population. We can make the tax code easier for average people in most situations to deal with as well simply to remove some friction.

notRobot 6y ago

I volunteer with a lot of high-school kids, and from what I've seen, they've been okay for the most part when it comes to mental health, except for those who have toxic families and who use school as an escape (to get out of the house, recharge, etc.). For those kids, it's been really, really hard. :(

marketingPro 6y ago
When I first heard the home abuse story I shivered because I had a mere mild version as a late teenager. I literally trained for a marathon because that meant 2-4 hours/day away from the house. The only good that came out of it was that I studied so freaking hard so I could get a job and move out. There was no empathy for this demographic, but lots of empathy for 70+ year olds.
- microcolonel 6y ago
  > There was no empathy for this demographic, but lots of empathy for 70+ year olds. There was lots of empathy for young people, including from those 70+ folks; it's just the narrative can not sustain on a diet of empathy. In the places where lockdowns have been both draconian and ineffective, the priority is more to give the impression that the politicians are "doing something", not to seek a good outcome on a balance of opportunities taken and missed.
- tomjen3 6y ago
  For the longest time the lockdown was pretty much screwing over young people for the benefit of old people. Now I am not in the US, but I do wonder if so much would have been shutdown if it had been young people who died, like it was in 1920.
  - kazagistar 6y ago
    Screwing over young people for the benefit of old people is kinda the norm. But at least in this case it's justified because it's literally millions of lives on the line. Its just hard for the young people to empathize sometimes given how much they are screwed over economically and environmentally constantly.

noetokyo 6y ago

Oh man this is great. This is basically saying what every other scientific paper has been saying for years. The decrease in the usage of social media led to a decrease in depression in teenagers. It's almost like facebook and instagram are inherently toxic by design and should not exist. To further clarify a 15% rate of depression in teens is higher than it was in 2017. The article lists in their survey for families who were well off during the pandemic still 15% which is really high. And 33% for those who were not. The fact the article ignores that fact is concerning to me. And makes this seem like a piece trying to claim social media isn't as "bad" as it seems. Claiming that sleep was beneficial for teens. When it in fact is suggestive otherwise that it is negligible.

pgrote 6y ago
> toxic by design and should not exist I have the same opinion; there are like three of us. They are failed experiments and need to end. There is no fixing them at this point and society is worse due to what they've become.
- collyw 6y ago
  "Social media was a mistake and the creators should be tried for crimes against humanity" Anon, 4chan
  - phone8675309 6y ago
    I always find this stance on 4chan amusing since 4chan is also social media. Just anonymous social media.
    - flyingfences 6y ago
      In my mind, that anonymity is what makes 4chan _not_ "social media" -- the "social" aspect is eliminated. When nobody is identifiable, the conversation necessarily becomes an exchange solely upon the content of the posts [1], not about the people posting. This distinguishes it from sites like Facebook and Twitter where identity is central to the discussion no matter how you try to ignore it and also from pseudonymous sites like Reddit and traditional forums where a person doesn't necessarily have a "real" identity tied to their post but does have an established identity, where other posters can see and bring up somebody's posting history. On a truly anonymous platform like 4chan, the only thing you can possibly know about the people you're talking to is what they've said in that one thread -- all other aspects of their identity are unavailable and irrelevant. [1] (and, unfortunately, projections and inferences and ad-hominems...)

DavidSJ 6y ago

One plausible explanation: school is as bad for teens' mental health as quarantine, so going from one to the other has been a wash.

runawaybottle 6y ago
Well, duh. You have to ask someone to use the bathroom. A typical office is stocked with snacks and drinks. You can step away for a walk. We treat kids in school way worse than adults in the white collar working world (we basically treat them like blue collar workers).
- ethbr0 6y ago
  Blue collar workers... surrounded by sociopaths with incompletely developed impulse control and self reflection.
- enditruu 6y ago
  The fact that there are teachers out there who will sometimes just refuse to allow kids to go to the bathroom is just insane. What good does treating students like that actually bring?
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    At least in my urban high school experience, some teachers were of about equal maturity level to their students. Also, students would go to the bathroom and then just not come back and roam the halls and enter random classrooms and say hi to all of their friends in the middle of class.
    - srtjstjsj 6y ago
      And why do kids do that? Either because school is miserable and/or because saying hello to a friend isn't a moral travesty
      - 6y ago

marketingPro 6y ago

The first people I saw to break quarantine laws were teens who met up at the park, then went to someone's house to play basketball. No school + get to see your friends? Yeah I can see that being good for mental health.. My 29 year old single male friends? Multiple told me they were going to try to get anti depressants. They refused to link it to the quarantine (politically they were in full support of the quarentine). And me? Unemployment with my 1 year old was fun for 3 months. By month 5, the kid learned how to rule the household. I'm so glad I'm hired and the kid is in daycare.

asdff 6y ago
In march in LA kids basically dropped off the face of the earth in terms of schooling. Parks were closed, but they were playing full court basketball at my local park anyway since march to right now, at the same levels as before the pandemic, with spectators in the bleachers too. Basically teenage summer came early and has been going on for 7 months now.
vbezhenar 6y ago
It’s feels good to be an asocial nerd. Like nothing really changed for me.
- op00to 6y ago
  I constantly battle with my partner because I’m perfectly happy holing Up at home until a vaccine but my partner demands outings and family visits aplenty.

aaron695 6y ago

It's an exciting fun time. It's also less stressful, it's ok to skip stuff. Results don't matter as much. Next year when some of their parents are still unemployed, expectations back, but some kids will be further behind. Everything that seems to matter now will be forgotten. That's when I'd expect to start seeing them top themselves at an increased demographic level.

derptron 6y ago
Exciting and fun? If you're a sociopath.

scandox 6y ago

Well looking out my window that's because they're having a whale of a time and I I haven't the heart to blame them really. They're roaming the streets here like a herd of frisky wildebeest.

asdff 6y ago
Summer 2020 is infinite.

nikk1 6y ago

The unintended consequence of the pandemic is that teenagers are getting more sleep, who now don't have to commute to school to start class at 7 am. Maybe this is a case for high schools to continue to teach classes online (or maybe partially online), even after the pandemic?

collyw 6y ago
I do feel there is a bit more to school that just lessons, being able to function socially is a large part of that.
noetokyo 6y ago
Though that is an interesting topic. The data doesnt suggest that sleep had any effect on the depression rates of teens.
- falcor84 6y ago
  Could you please link to any studies where this was examined?
  - noetokyo 6y ago
    Sorry, I think you are mistaking what I'm writing. I'm referring to this article and basing it of PEW Research on adolescence with depression. The addition of more sleep hasn't changed anything in this survey. In regards to already existing reports by PEW on the rates of depression which in teenagers and in more specifically girls have an exponential growth in depression rates. Its not due to a change in social stigma but rather the use of social media. Specifically facebook and instagram which most teenage girls spend the majority of their time on.
- nikk1 6y ago
  Sleep impacts all aspects of health, including mental health, of all age groups.
- nradov 6y ago
  Sleep deprivation is actually an effective treatment for many cases of depression. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-sleep-deprivation-eases-depression/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-sleep-depriva...

gilrain 6y ago

Politically in support of quarantine? It's established medical science. That we're at a point where epidemiology is political is truly worrying. Donald Trump learned that ignoring science doesn't make it go away to his detriment; I really hope others will take note and follow prevailing medical advice to keep themselves and their loved ones safe, rather than pretending it's political.

nsxwolf 6y ago
You can accept the science that a quarantine prevents disease from spreading. You can also take the stance that the quarantine isn't worth it. Not mutually exclusive ideas.
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  The problem with that stance is that you're taking it on faith that the economy will do better without a quarantine than with one. A large number of sick and dead people and the fear of such will destroy an economy, quarantine or not. https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-sweden-gdp-falls-8pc-in-q2-worse-nordic-neighbors-2020-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-sweden-gdp-falls...
  - frockington1 6y ago
    I think its pretty clear that places where the economy shut down longer are affected more, at least in the US. In the midwest where I live everything is almost back to normal, Main difference is you have to put a piece of cotton over your face when you walk into a bar. Housing market is still strong and jobs are to be had. Meanwhile NYC and other shut down areas are seeing an exodus of the wealthy
    - kazagistar 6y ago
      Its not over yet. I live in a rural area and we are seeing the worst spike yet.
    - 6y ago

blaser-waffle 6y ago

My nephews were mostly playing Battle Royale-type shooters 24/7 well before COVID. Now they don't even have to leave the house. The 18 year old was multi-tasking his Eve Online account + school Zoom meetings. I've been remote like ~5 years and was impressed.

duskwuff 6y ago
> The 18 year old was multi-tasking his Eve Online account + school Zoom meetings. I've been remote like ~5 years and was impressed. Hey, at least school is teaching him some important life skills!

speeder 6y ago

In my country this wouldn't surprise me at all. School system here is basically hell, they picked the worst parts of USA and EU styles of education and mixed them into some kind of unholy beast designed to break children. Here many schools have the building literally designed after prisons, something that kids DO pick up (the most important school in my town had the nickname when I was teenager, of "Cadeião", that means "big jail", a nickname also used to refer to supermax prisons). Although we don't get a ton of mass shootings like USA, non-mass shootings are normal (and mind you, in a country where guns are banned... people still find a way to get guns anyway, also axes, knives, etc... we had a "mass axing" here...), violence between not just students, but students and teachers. Much of this I suspect is because my country is one of the few ones in the world where homeschooling is 100% illegal, with no exceptions, attempting homeschool here is a serious crime that results in the parents being arrested and the kids sent to orphanage, so you have schools full of kids that DO NOT want to be there, ever, so they focus their time on making life hell for everybody around them, hoping that maybe someday, people will kick them out of the system (but they won't, because it is illegal). About EU vs USA vs Brazil schooling system: I lost the excellent article I read about it years ago, but basically in USA the students can choose what classes they want, this including theoretically let them switch what classes their are going if they want to avoid a certain student. Meanwhile in Europe the classes are fixed, everyone go to same classes, but in many places you can choose the curriculum, so if you want to be an engineer for example you can pick an engineering focused curriculum, classes will be fixed, and all students you see every day won't chance, but you will learn more about what you want. In Brazil the government decided somehow, that the best path was not choose anything, all schools have same curriculum, all university entry exams are obligated to ask some mininum about subjects even if they are irrelevant (ie: if you are offering a physics course, you still need to ask literature questions in your entry exam), you can't choose time, can't choose curriculum, nothing. Basically you go to school when it opens, stick with same students even if they hate your guts, see the same subjects as everyone else, even if they are completely irrelevant, and then you go home, and you keep repeating this until you have to get into a university, when you then have to take a government-ran test (that often includes propaganda) and whatever test that the universities you want to enter have, such test must ask along whatever the university wants to know, also some questions about subjects the government wants all universities to ask to all students, no matter if it is completely irrelevant or useless for their lives.

rossdavidh 6y ago

So, I like to think of myself as not overly protective, but fairly early on in the pandemic, during the actual shelter-in-place part, my teenage daughter said, "It's not like anything has really changed for me all that much". Ouch. She watched more TV, and via Zoom got to see what everybody else's living rooms looked like, but in the U.S. most professional class kids don't get a lot of free-roaming time anyway, so the only difference is you're trading school time (never their favorite part) for house time. So I'm not sure this means quarantine isn't so bad, more like we have kids in quarantine all the time nowadays compared to a generation ago so it wasn't much of a change.

chrisseaton 6y ago
Isn’t sport massively important in US schools, and for getting into college? That must have been a big change not being able to go to ‘practice’ and all their clubs?
- helen___keller 6y ago
  > Isn’t sport massively important in US schools? For the kids involved in sports, sure. That's not all kids.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    Ah kind of assumed it was mandatory for all children to have a sport or club in the US - films and articles about college admission make it look so.
    - davewashere 6y ago
      Athletics is one way high schoolers with less than stellar academic records can navigate past college admissions departments and get accepted at a school where they might not otherwise be qualified. Most people already knew this about scholarship athletes, but the recent college admissions scandal involved non-athletes being listed by college coaches as recruited athletes. It's basically the coach telling the admissions department that this student might play on their team and therefore should get preferential treatment with admissions.

jdlyga 6y ago

There was no FOMO because everyone was in quarantine too. A lot of times you were quarantined with your parents, so you have your family to support you.

fcatalan 6y ago

My kids are a bit younger, but the article reads a lot like our life during the hard quarantine period in Spain. They couldn't set a foot out of the door for 52 straight days and only walk around the block for a few more weeks, but they adapted perfectly, slept more, never were bored or sad, did great with their remote school tasks, enjoyed the extended family time and even had a fun and instructive peek into adult work life: they were surprisingly insightful and critical about the good and bad aspects of mom&dad jobs. And while the reason for it was bad and my wife and me were worried, anxious and sleepless, in retrospect our life was good in a lot of ways: The kids were OK, we ate better, we exercised, work got done beyond expectations, we had more free time and discovered that many of the disagreements and tensions in our marriage come from the outside. Being together 24/7 was easier than getting along living the usual crazy "normal life".

torgian 6y ago

Great, but if there was enforced quarantine for a month or two, we’d be fine by now. Too bad this is going to last a lot longer...

qwerty456127 6y ago

As a child I really loved being left at home, preferably alone, for as long as possible. So I can have no doubt there are many children who actually enjoy a lock-down. Introverts are real and introvert children can do even better (than adults) entertaining themselves at home.

hammock 6y ago

What do you mean "did"? We are still in quarantine. I cannot visit Europe. My friends won't hang out with me. Etc

kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago

1. School times are way too early for most teens. I am sure that just not having to get up that soon is doing a lot for their overall wellbeing. 2. American high-schools are some of the most toxic environments you could ever be in, and would give the most "hostile workplaces" a run for their money. They suck for the nerdy kid who wants to be left to his / her own devices. They suck for the middling kids who don't want to be on the perpetual status treadmill.

baxtr 6y ago
Trust me, high schools outside of the US as well. There’s something about that age span that is very exciting but aggravating at the same time. I am happy for me that I passed without major injuries, physical and mental.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
  Teens are horrible across the world, but some cultures manage school life a bit better (of course, probably with some other trade-offs). Indians (and Chinese too I think) for example, generally have some amount of implicit respect for 'education' (there is a goddess of learning and education in India) and for teachers. Parents-from-hell exist but at least when I was growing up, discipline was expected, teachers were given the benefit of doubt instead of always siding with the kids, kids actually used to be somewhat scared of teachers and the principal (I mean sure they would make fun of them behind their back but at least there was some amount of deference to authority) and the overall environment kept kids in line. The kind of bullying that passes for normal in American schools would never fly. I mean it doesn't fly in American workplaces either. It's the kind of bullshit we only tolerate in schools for some reason.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    > Indians (and Chinese too I think) for example, generally have some amount of implicit respect for 'education' (there is a goddess of learning and education in India) and for teachers. I can confirm this is true of Chinese.

Shivetya 6y ago

Considering just my own observations they did well because for the most part many of them totally ignored any of the quarantine advice that was given out an only were impacted by it when establishments they frequent were closed or enforced rules. If anything it drove more gatherings at each others homes. I have seen an entire wrestling team at homes along with parents around. Seems there was this super brief restraint that suddenly blew out especially when so many didn't want to be inhibited.

mytailorisrich 6y ago

When I was a teen it would have been very hard. Basically nothing but TV and a landline (and calls "aren't free" as per my parents). But, as a parent myself now, I can see that my children have stayed in contact with their friends almost continuously with text messaging and audio and video calls. I think that technology has been a tremendous help. Even school continued remotely on its normal schedule. As others have mentioned, this also allowed more pupils to sleep until later in the morning, which was probably a good thing as well, though obviously the level of physical exercise plummeted.

deleted 6y ago

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tehjoker 6y ago

This is an odd finding to me. The CDC found that of 18-24 year olds surveyed June 24-30, one in four seriously considered suicide within the past thirty days. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6932a1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6932a1.htm Discussion by Glenn Greenwald: https://theintercept.com/2020/08/28/the-social-fabric-of-the-u-s-is-fraying-severely-if-not-unravelling/ https://theintercept.com/2020/08/28/the-social-fabric-of-the... I find it somewhat incredible that the results would be going essentially in opposite directions so close in age range.

kortilla 6y ago
It shouldn’t be that surprising. The change in the way your life is structured and how you are treated by society drastically changes after high school.
- tehjoker 6y ago
  That's true, but these kid's parents aren't doing so hot. I'm a little incredulous that this stress isn't being transmitted.
nobody9999 6y ago
>I find it somewhat incredible that the results would be going essentially in opposite directions so close in age range. I wonder if the kids studied were more from higher socio-economic strata than the median. The methodology section of the appendix to the study linked[0] by the Atlantic article is vague on socio-economic status. Since many of those who are on the high end have had significantly less disruption than those on the lower end. If the sample was skewed toward the higher end of the spectrum, perhaps that could account for the results. [0] https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/final-teenquarantine2020.pdf https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/final-teenquaranti... Edit: Included the missing link.

02020202 6y ago

..except those who offed themselves.

kryogen1c 6y ago

wtf?! why is the headline photo an upskirt shot? regardless of your opinion on how young is too young (these girls are too young), a professional news outlet shouldnt photograph peoples underwear up a skirt. am i crazy/too old? no one else?

macjohnmcc 6y ago

Being an introvert as a teen my experience would not have changed much except less exposure to people at school I didn't really interact with anyway.

p1mrx 6y ago

Why is this article written in the past tense? Is the pandemic over and everyone forgot to tell me?

adrianmonk 6y ago
Maybe it's just because the article refers to a specific study that surveyed teens from May to July. It's probably hard to make a concise headline that is true to that limitation and also conveys that the pandemic isn't over.

adrianmonk 6y ago

> survey of 1,523 U.S. teens from May to July this year Given that, I would take this with a grain of salt. Half of that time is summer, when teens normally aren't in school anyway. So if being able to socialize with friends and peers is an important part of teens' mental health (I think it is), then this study doesn't really cover that very well. Also, July was a few months ago. It's possible things get worse over the long haul.

m0zg 6y ago

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." -- Hunter S. Thompson. My 16 y.o. son is not struggling with quarantine at all, but his education is taking a massive nosedive - something he's not yet mature enough to worry about. So yeah, mental health-wise he's fine. Education-wise he's in a bit of a pickle. I say "a bit" because we've been supplementing his education with STEM tutoring for the past 3 years or so, which is not something poorer people can afford to do. _Those_ kids are fucked like you wouldn't believe. I think we'd be better off canceling the entire school year, furloughing all teachers, and keeping kids in the same grade for the time being.

somerandomboi 6y ago

High school is a complete hell-hole full of warring social factions. I wouldn't be surprised if people didn't try to physically decimate each other when in-person classes return.

polyacr 6y ago

How well can the mental health of the depictured teenagers be, when they're doing their picnic out in the open with mask on their faces? Does not look "mentally well" to me.