3. Feelings of Loss
Most young people expressed some sense of loss as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, although they experienced this in several different ways.
3.1 Relationships: loneliness and managing difficult emotions.The majority of participants expressed sadness or annoyance at being apart from their friends when they were working from home, and found this difficult: “I couldn’t get out and I couldn’t go and see my friends, so that was quite hard and I guess it made me kind of upset” (Isabel). Conversely, some recognised that lockdown had both positive and negative aspects regarding relationships, which made them feel mixed emotions: “happy with my family. But sad when I miss my friends. So kind of a mixed range of emotions I would say” (McEye). However, for others, there was a broader range of emotions present:
A mix really. Sometimes I’m gonna be upset with myself and say, I’m trying to interact with my friends online. But say like I’m doing a hand gesture and they can’t see, it annoys me a little bit, so annoyance and upset. But also I have happiness because I can finally see my family for more than five minutes before I’ve got to go to bed (Jeff).
Even since returning to school, safety measures such as ‘bubbles’ meant that they still did not see their friends:
It’s a bit sad, because … I can’t see them [my friends] because we’re in year group bubbles, because I don’t just have friends in year nine I have friends higher up in school, and now I can’t really see them apart from if I see them like waiting for the buses or anything… it’s not the same as chatting to them for like an hour (Alfred).
Some participants also missed other family members during lockdown: “I really did miss my Nana a bit. When she was finally able to come round, it was just really nice. I couldn’t see my cousin’s either… not being able to see them was the negative” (Olaf). One participant described how talking to family members over video “felt weird” as “they weren’t that used to the technology” (Bruce) which was a barrier to keeping in touch with wider family.
3.2 Support from teachers. All participants commented on the loss of support from their teachers when working from home, stating this as the main reason for preferring to be in school: “I didn’t really like it because I’d rather be at school. Because I’d be able to ask the teacher and all that… And, when you’re online you’re not able to… do that. I kind of like being in school more” (Elsa). For some, this was particularly challenging for certain subjects:
So you just message [the teachers] saying I didn’t really understand that bit and they would get back to me, but I found that bit really hard, because with some types of work like Spanish, I felt it was better with help from the teachers, because it’s languages and you need to hear it, so it makes sense (Isabel).
However, a small proportion of participants commented how doing their schoolwork from home had actually given them more independence, which they enjoyed: “I actually find it a lot easier… I did all the work. I was sat in a comfortable place. I have the TV right in front of me. Most teachers say that like music makes you distracted or something, but I find that it really helps me… I found it quite nice just to be able to do it when I want or how I want without the teachers and every other student around me” (Olaf). Others commented that it was motivating themselves to do the work without having “a teacher to tell me ready what to do” (Trevor) that was the tricky element, while some felt the main difficulty was not being able to get immediate feedback on their work:
You could send them an email during the lesson but… it would take them a while to get, to respond to like, it was very strange because some of the teachers in school, they have inboxes with thousands of emails in and it’s, it takes a while, you have to, you might have to send a couple of emails before it gets through (Alfred).
However, even on returning to school, some participants noted that the new restrictions meant they still could not always get support or immediate feedback from their teacher:
The teachers have to stay in a box so they can’t go out of the box to help you. So if you sit at the back of the classroom, you have to, you’d have to ask for help, and you couldn’t go to them. You just have to ask questions in front of the whole class, and they have to like zoom in on the board, and they can’t mark our books so the books have to isolate for 72 hours (Isabel).
3.3 Loss of hobbies and experiences. Some young people described how hobbies they previously enjoyed has “just gone” (Alfred), both in school, such as lunchtime clubs, choir and band, and outside of school, such as Scouts and Guides, netball and football. Some described this as “annoying” because they could not see their friends at these clubs (Elsa), while others felt sad: “I used to go to Guides every single Wednesday and in lockdown, we would just have a zoom call and then it was the summer holidays and it’s just not been the same really… it does make me feel upset” (Isabel).
Some participants also described a loss of broader experiences as a result of the pandemic, such as not being able to have a birthday party or go on holiday: “[I was] annoyed because going on holidays is the best bit of the year and we missed it” (Trevor). For the young people who had transitioned to secondary school over the summer holidays, missing their last days of primary school was particularly upsetting: “I just felt sometimes I just really want to do [the leavers’ disco]. Because… it’ll be like a nice ending. And you remember those bits where you’re leaving, but now you don’t have much to like remember, all them happy experiences” (McEye). They went on to explain that they felt they had lost out on being able to do activities together with their primary school class during the last weeks of term: “because we had to social distance, we couldn’t do as much as we really wanted to… we all wanted to be together but we couldn’t”.
Furthermore, for these participants, they also had not been required to do their primary school Standard Assessment Tests (SATs) which they were upset about due to the work they had put into preparing for them:
You’ve done all your mocks, you’ve worked really hard and then you don’t get to do like the final assessment to see where you’re actually at. So I would say it’s a bad thing… It’s just like your mocks were pointless, basically because you don’t actually get to do your SATs. So it made me feel quite upset (McEye).