School-age kids: The pandemic’s psychological toll
“American children are starting 2022 in crisis,” said David Leonhardt in The New York Times. The spread of the Omicron variant has only magnified “how alarming the situation had become” after nearly two years of kids enduring isolation from friends, ambient fear of getting sick, and the unpredictable chaos of their parents’ lives and their own. Emergency-room visits for suspected suicide attempts by teenage girls rose by about 50 percent from early 2019 to early 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Schools are seeing rampant disruptive behavior, with students burying their heads in their arms during class or lashing out at teachers with abusive language. Who could blame kids for being distraught? Even with many campuses reopened, “oncenormal aspects of school life—lunchtime, extracurricular activities, assemblies, school trips, parent-teacher conferences, reliable bus schedules—have been transformed if not eliminated.” Many adults have decided these sacrifices are necessary to minimize infections among both kids and their families from a potentially deadly virus. But given how much they’ve had to give up, “it should not be surprising that children are suffering so much.”
Their education has also suffered a huge setback, said Jessica Calefati in Politico. Test scores in reading and math have plummeted. On the national iReady exam, “the share of students performing below grade level in math” swelled 17 percent among kids who attend mostly Black schools; “nearly two-thirds of those learners are now behind.” Latino students are similarly struggling. “Overall, the students most affected are the second- and third-graders who were still learning to read when the pandemic began, and the tweens who couldn’t grasp the shift from procedural to conceptual math when the lessons were delivered virtually.” An education setback of this scale and degree is unprecedented, and it’s only getting worse. “I don’t know a single parent who is entirely satisfied with her child’s school right now,” said Nancy Kaffer in the Detroit Free Press.
“Not if your school pivoted to virtual last week,” as at least 4,500 were forced to do as teachers fell sick with Covid, causing rampant staff shortages. Even where schools have remained open amid the Omicron wave, many parents “just don’t feel they’re taking it seriously enough.” Meanwhile, so many activities crucial to children’s growth and well-being, including sports games, music lessons, and clubs, keep getting canceled.
What is filling the void? asked Tim Winter in the Washington Examiner. “Screen time and technology.” When parents needed to work while kids were home, previous limits on time spent on social media and smartphones “flew out the window,” with kids spending an unprecedented number of hours online. That leads to all kinds of trouble. A recent study from Thorn “found that nearly 1 in 7 children ages 9-12 shared their own nude photos last year, almost triple the number from just one year earlier.” There’s also been a sharp increase in “online bullying,” said child psychiatrist David Scharff in Psychology Today. Isolated at home, bored, and angry, kids are torturing one another on social media. “These attacks often happen without the parents’ knowledge,” because their children feel such deep shame that they keep their misery to themselves.
Pediatricians are warning of a “children’s mental health emergency,” said Julia Hotz in Scientific American. An estimated 175,000 kids have lost a parent or other caregiving relative to Covid. They’ve dealt with unrelenting fear for themselves and their families, and repeatedly activating the fight-or-flight response risks damaging a child’s brain. Many kids have been spending more time at home, unable to escape parents’ domestic violence and/or substance abuse, both of which “significantly rose” during the stress and unemployment connected to the pandemic.
Even when students do return to school, said Erica Green in The New York Times, the mood is tense and somber. Students say they’re struggling to relearn how to socialize and manage commitments. Jazlyn Korpics, a senior at Liberty High School in Bethlehem, Pa., said that it was a big letdown when the students returned to school. “People don’t know how to communicate anymore,” Korpics said. “Everybody’s a robot now—their minds are warped.” The school’s principal, Harrison Bailey III, said that the school feels like a powder keg, with students engaging in frequent brawls and speaking to teachers with “flagrant disrespect.” Virtually every day, another student is suspended. “I think kids are just feeling like—after witnessing Trump, political unrest, what happened in the streets with Black Lives Matter, now the pandemic—the world’s out of control,” Bailey said. “So they’re like, ‘The world’s out of control, why should I be in control?’”