‘I’M SPENDING EIGHT HOURS A DAY ON MY PHONE’ JAKE PARK, 16

Before lockdown started, I was in the lower sixth at a college in Wigan, where I was studying for three A-levels in Spanish, film studies and media studies.

I got up at about 7am and left the house half an hour later for the hour-long journey on the bus. Classes started at about 9am, and went on until 3.45pm unless I had free periods in the afternoon. After another hourlong journey home, I’d get home at five.

Since my school has been closed, things have changed. At school, I hang out with my friends in break times, but now I just sit inside and look on my phone. I’m spending about eight hours a day on my phone. My parents usually try to limit that a bit, but they are way more lenient at the moment since they know there’s been literally nothing else to do for weeks.

There have even been a couple of occasions where I haven’t got out of bed at all for the whole day. There is no way I could have done this before lockdown, but now that my classes are all online, no one really notices if I’m not there. I’m actually pretty good compared to some of my friends, who can sleep in until noon and miss their classes in the morning.

I do worry about my education though, so I try to keep on top of my work as much as I can. Although I didn’t have any exams this year, I have my A-levels next summer, and know that if I don’t work hard now I’ll suffer then.

I have started seeing my friends again in the past couple of weeks as the restrictions have eased. We go to the park and just chat in small groups, since there’s not much else that we can do. We follow the regulations as much as we can, but it’s impossible to be always two metres apart. It seems a bit silly for us to be out of school because of the risk, when I’m seeing exactly the same people in my free time.

I had tickets for a festival, and holidays to Greece and Croatia planned for this summer, but all of it has been cancelled, which means that I’ll probably be doing the same thing for a couple of months.

I’m seeing my family more than normal, and that’s been nice as my 21-year-old sister is working from home at the moment. My mum works in the police and is out all day, but my dad is furloughed from his management job, so spends his days doing odd jobs about the house.