4. Stress, Worry, and Challenge
Participants described certain elements of the COVID-19 pandemic that they found difficult, or that made them feel stressed or worried. They described experiencing a range of emotions, including anger, frustration, nervousness, sadness, boredom, and confusion.
4.1 Worries about COVID-19. Participants expressed varying degrees of worry in relation to the COVID-19 virus. Some were not too concerned: “I’m not that worried about it because I know all the people in my family are gonna be safe” (Peter), while others were very worried about a family member catching it: “I’m worried that someone in my family is gonna get really sick and then end up… having to go to hospital for a while or, the worst thing happening which I don’t want to say because I think I might cry” (Jeff). Indeed, the main concern for almost all young people was as family member or friend catching the virus: “the only time I would be bothered, [is] if someone I know tested positive” (Olaf). However, the majority acknowledged that while it was on their mind, they were not necessarily scared of it: “I don’t think that I go [a] day without thinking about it in some way or another, but I’m not biting my fingernails about it” (Alfred).
For some participants, the concern was more around how long restrictions were going to last for: “it’s not a worry thing but I think about, is there gonna be a vaccine or are we gonna like have this for the entire…” (Gerald), and they were longing for a sense of normality: “it does make me feel upset because I guess I just want to go back to normal like without COVID and all that. So it’s just a bit upsetting to be honest” (Isabel).
Feeling safe was a key concern for a large proportion of the participants. For some, feelings of safety was the reason they were not worried about the virus: “I wasn’t scared because I knew if me and my family just stayed safe then we’d be fine” (Bruce). Most recognised the need to “be extra careful” and welcomed the additional safety measures implemented at school: “they’ve also put hand sanitiser stations in our classrooms so they are quite good the changes” (Isabel). However, some participants expressed concern that they “don’t particularly feel like fully safe” at school because social distancing measures were not always adhered to: “although we’ve got masks on, we still like squash together, and going up and down the stairs, between… between breaks, lunch and periods, it gets very chaotic. People often get pushed down the stairs and stuff” (Olaf).
4.2 Concerns surrounding the Government, media, and community.Some participants expressed some frustration with the Government and their handling of the pandemic; they felt annoyed that they had not implemented restrictions “like other countries had done” (Alfred): “I was feeling quite angry… I feel like the government could have handled it better, so they could have said wear masks earlier… I would get quite annoyed at things” (Isabel). They also expressed confusion at the guidelines, with one participant stating, “[the Government] weren’t very calm with the situation, and they were giving different measures every week. Like, no pattern, it felt just a bit random” (Bruce).
Generally, participants understood the need for the lockdown restrictions, and sometimes thought they should be stricter. However, they did also recognise the potential negative outcomes of the lockdown measures:
I think it’s good that obviously, we went into a lockdown to stop the rise of cases. But it’s, I think it’s bad for our mental health because obviously we don’t get to interact with lots of people and you’re just stuck in your house. But we need to take it seriously because it’s killing people so if the number of cases do rise quite a lot, I think we should go into lockdown (McEye).
Most participants stated that they watched the news, often when their parents were watching it on the television. However, a couple of participants avoided it because they felt it would make them “overly stressed about stuff” (Jeff). Indeed, some felt that the media made them feel scared: “sometimes when I see stuff on the news, reporting… how many deaths there’s been, I get a bit worried” (McEye). Conversely, some felt that social media contributed to their worries: “I’ve got tik tok and lots of people are just like, ’Oh my gosh, like, what are we gonna do?’… some of it was quite upsetting to see, and I think that can really make people sad” (Isabel).
As noted above, most young people’s concerns surrounding COVID-19 were focused on others becoming ill from the virus and recognised that the restrictions were there to “protect other people” (Elsa). However, several young people also expressed concern for other people in different ways. For example, one was concerned for their Grandmother as their Grandfather was placed in a care home and “she took that like really hard” (Olaf), and another felt sad during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020: “during like, the Black Lives Matter protest, that was really upsetting because I guess lots of people were affected by it and how it changed people like mentally” (Isabel). However, young people also often felt frustration with others in their community, generally when they were not following the guidelines “I thought they were kind of stupid… you should have stayed inside because now you’re having the risk of spreading the virus” (Peter). One participant expressed how this made them feel confused: “there is blatantly arrows there and in the shops, they’ve got like ’please wear masks’, ’follow the arrows’ and stuff and yet people just ignore them. So just confused really as to why they just don’t want to follow them” (Olaf).
4.3 Managing schoolwork. A major challenge for most young people was managing their schoolwork from home, and most said that they would prefer to be in school. For some, it was keeping up with the amount of work set that was difficult, and they found it hard to focus when there were other distractions around, with no teachers to keep them on task:
It was a bit like stressful with the work and stuff because we had quite a lot of work to do, and it was like quite hard to keep like concentrated and stuff when I’m at home because I could easily just go on my phone or like go to my dog or stuff (Sofee).
Technology was also mentioned by several participants as a particular challenge:
At the start, it was really hard because I didn’t really know how like Google Classroom was working so I was working on my mum’s old Kindle, because that’s the only thing that would be working, and I couldn’t take photos on it so I had to say to my teachers, I’ve done it on paper. And then I started using my tablet, which, that was a lot better. So it was hard to try and, you know, stay positive about it (Isabel).
Furthermore, confidence in their schoolwork was an issue noted by several participants, due to a lack of feedback: “so I would submit some work and some teachers would get back straight away, and some of them would leave it until quite a while. I guess that had knocked my confidence a bit because I didn’t know if I was doing it right or wrong. So that was quite hard” (Isabel). However, others commented that keeping up with their work during lockdown made them feel more confident, as they were more prepared than their classmates:
It made me feel good like ’cause… I know I’m gonna be ahead… say we do a test for like, for what they sent us in lockdown, [classmates] wouldn’t be as prepared as I am so I’d be getting better marks than them so that was mainly what helped me through (Jeff).
Some participants also commented on the challenges presented when they were sent home from school due to someone in their bubble testing positive for COVID-19:
I found a little bit awkward ’cause we’d just got, we just got in for two weeks, so we’d got used to the work and we’d settled in and then on the last Friday in the morning, we were immediately sent home, so I was like ‘oh no’ I was like ‘what was happening’ and then the teachers told us that we’d have to go home, so that was hard because you’ve like, you’ve got ready for school and then you’ve just got to go immediately home (Jeff).
This was particularly difficult for the participants who had started at a new school, as they were still adjusting to their new classmates:
Some people have forgot each other’s names and stuff. Everyone’s been like really confused about what we’re meant to do but like loads of people, are just like, ’what’s your name, what’s your name?’ because we only had like a brief time in school. We only had like four weeks to start off and then we were isolating for two weeks. And now we’re back. Yeah, so it’s been like a bit in out in out (McEye).
However, participants did note that not all elements of working from home were negative. Some found it easier to concentrate: “it was actually quite a lot easier because we, we were allowed to fidget… to have music on in the background. Yeah, it was just generally easier” (Gerald), and work at their own pace: “my class… just messes around, and they took the teacher’s time away, so that’s why we didn’t get much of the work done. So when I came home, I just got the work done really quickly, so I just found it really easy” (Olaf).