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).