One in three young people say they felt happier during lockdown
cam.ac.uk
cam.ac.uk
Sounds pretty much like a normal (gaussian) distribution, or basically a non-story. Guessing if they measured satisfaction on a scale, the majority were clustered near the "no major change" camp, as with any gaussian curve. As we already know, it turns out humans can adapt to things.
By phrasing the headline result as "1 in 3 felt happier," it creates a narrative where there likely isn't one. You imagine the 33% were this solid block of people feeling much happier. But, re: the gaussian distribution, its likely very few were at the extremes, and most were clustered towards the middle.
Textbook clickbait. It invites you to react with your emotional, anecdotal feelings about what this means to you, as if there was any interesting finding there.
For me textbook clickbait is an article that does not substantiate the promise of the headline, or one that comically exaggerates the excitement of the information in the article. There are people who believe the lockdowns were wholly an atrocity on children, and this article substantiates a counterbalance without going all the way (after all, the headline itself tells you that 2/3 children were unaffected or negatively affected).
Seems that it absolutely skews negative for the kids who had to deal with more lockdowns, i.e. not going to school with their peers.
> So a normal distribution is news.
I don't see anywhere in the article where they claim it's a normal distribution? OP was just speculating IIUC.
That's incorrect.
If you look at Figure-1 from [the article](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00787-021-01934-z ), it appears that students were happier when they attended either "Not at all" or "Every day". It's the middle-ground options that averaged out to show lower-satisfaction.
Or to frame it differently, students who never went to school in-person reported a net-positive average: 33.5% better vs. 32.7% worse (vs. 33.8% the same). That doesn't support the notion that students didn't like staying home.
That said, I'd warn against over-interpreting such small differences.
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Separately, if we did want to speculate based on the data: we might guess that it was about consistency.
Students appeared to be happiest when they attended not-all-all or every-day, with lower improvements in middle-ground options.
Comparing the two extremes, there is a preference for every-day over not-at-all (stressing that we're talking about smaller figures here), but even that might be explainable in terms of consistency: because, before the pandemic, students did attend every-day -- so not-at-all was a major shift in lifestyle for those students, i.e. a major inconsistency.
Hypothetically, if students always attended online, but then some had to start attending in-person every-day, we might see the reverse bias, as then it'd be the students who'd have to attend having the major shift in lifestyle.
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All that said, there appear to be more underlying factors.
For example, if we look at Table 2, it appears that there was a more considerable gender-gap:
* males were happier (2400 vs. 1836);
* females weren't (3185 vs. 3861).
That's a large enough relative-disparity as to suggest that it may be a mistake to interpret the data in a gender-blind way; the little on-average differences seem overshadowed by the gender-differences.
At the same time, the media starts talking about how bad homeschooling and lockdowns are for kids mental health and suicide rates.
Consent is always manufactured.
I feel the need to intervene here. The only thing political leaders want... is to get reelected. That is there job. To get reelected.
Sure, in certain cases, a politician has kids and wants their kids back in school. But in this example the line should go:
Political leaders had constituents that wanted kids back in school, so the leaders worked to make that happen.
We have been spared most lockdown measures, but had a couple of weeks with closed schools and day care. It was fine, but my kids were absolutely better of once schools and day care opened again.
If your kids experienced only a month of lockdowns returning to normal would make them absolutely better. What if you were locked down for the entire year or two? After your kids get use to it they might respond differently.
Many kids, including our three, would be perfectly happy if they didn't have to do any schoolwork ever again.
During the worst lockdown period here our middle child got 45 mins "online" with his teacher each day, and apart from that, he was on his own. Two working parents, with two (allegedly) full-time jobs. As the saying goes, "do the math"...
Far too much TV was watched. Far too much youtube too. Far too much Minecraft was played.
For the kids this was Just Fine(!) For us parents, not so much.
It's really, really hard for kids to avoid a handful of super-toxic students in their class, when in person. Your options are much more limited than an adult's are under similar circumstances.
Avoiding everyone is not the best solution to that. It's a part of growing up to be able to deal with people of all ilks. Living in a bubble is not healthy.
I have plenty of anecdotal evidence of suicides and depression in lockdown.
Numbers like x% better are meaningless without a base rate and this article is guilty of presenting numbers in that way. It's dangerous talk, so the author should be more responsible IMHO, or it indicative of the author not caring. Higher or lower against the base rate, this article will likely be quoted incorrectly and foster myths.
Everything I'm finding suggests they went up (the CDC "morbidity and mortality weekly report" indicated a 22% spike in 2020 relative to 2019).
The CDC data was reviewed by him on this thread. This is perhaps the simplest summary:
https://twitter.com/tylerblack32/status/1470785676316663820?...
Edit: There is actually an interesting presentation of data on this and other school mental health impacts on a even more macro basis in the Urgency of Equity website data packet which tries to provide a scientifically backed set of recommendations for schools going forward on Covid. It is biased to taking more specific actions than the anti-vax/anti-mask crowd, and even the current Covid policies of many governments.
Once Hybrid/Remote started, suicides worse, implying worse than baseline. But slightly within error bars for most.
So order of good > bad: No School > In-Person school > Hybrid
(see pg 25 for the graphs on the Urgency of Equity packet).
There's been a thousand studies about this (becoming a refugee, poverty vs. being rich, etc etc).
For most people, the only thing that has the power to permanently change your mental state is the death of someone very close to you (a spouse, child, etc) or forced exile from an identity forming social tie (eg. divorce, getting fired)
Are you kidding? Of all the possible consequences from completely changing the daily life of people "no overall change on happiness" was the least plausible one.
So, for me this is not a non-story and, in fact, somewhat unexpected. I'm hoping it'll trigger more in-depth research into what made those 33% happier. Some of the reasons are obvious but I suspect there's more nuance.
Depends on your perspective I think. Where I live (Sweden) the general sentiment was that young people would kill themselves in droves if there was a lockdown. So here this should be news, I’d say.
I don't think this is the right take. I'm going to venture that pretty much everyone thinks it was worse than this, i.e. that the more young people feel depressed than happier in COVID-time. So "it's actually on average no effect" very much is a "story", it would be something that would cause most people to substantially update their models of the world if it's sound research.
Put differently, "1 in 3 young people felt depressed" isn't surprising at all. "1 in 3 young people felt happier" is surprising to me. So leading with the surprising bit makes sense for a lede.
All of this is meta-level, I have no opinion on the object-level validity of the research.
For a Gaussian, I would have expected 1 felt worse, 6 felt the same and 1 felt better. The current numbers sound more like an uniform distribution.
If your interpretation is correct, this means the center of the distribution is "neutral", but it could very well not be the case.
They did measure satisfaction on a scale. From page four of the report:
> Students responded on a sliding scale of 0–100 with five labelled categories, ‘Much worse’, ‘Slightly worse’, ‘The same’, ‘Slightly better’, and ‘Much better’, anchored at scores 0, 25, 50, 75, and 100, respectively. We simplified the scale in this analysis by transforming it into groups of those doing ‘worse’ (scores 0–37.5 on the sliding scale), ‘the same’ (scores 37.6–62.5), or ‘better’ (scores 62.6–100) (N.B. categories are not evenly divided due to how the scale is presented in the survey; please see https://osf.io/fpbt3/ for an example of the survey scales).
Fitting a normal distribution with 1/3 of the volume in the 37.6–62.5 range ends up with 1/5 of respondents above the "Slightly better" mark (i.e. above 75).
> The common narrative that the pandemic has had overwhelmingly negative effects on the lives of children and young people might not tell the full story [-Emma Soneson]
They appear to be arguing against that narrative rather than for the opposite.
Now when I actually have to interact with people it’s in a low enough volume that it’s enjoyable and not the crapshoot it used to be: OK or ordeal depending on the day.
With a lockdown I think I'd be just fine at home or in a student hall, putting the most into studying.
Compared to my undergrad there were many times I think I just sat around drinking/watching movies because there was a social group doing it. I wonder if the lack of purpose in such activities grinds on students over time.
But a few weeks in my wife got really depressed, she didn't want to do anything but complain about lockdowns. I spent rest of next two years trying to cheer her up. It was exhausting. So finally I gave up on social distancing guidelines and we started to socialize like normal. But for some reason she continues to complain about lockdowns, covid, etc. I am spending all my energy cheering her.
After a while the clubs re-opened but I realized I was no longer drawn to go to. My life on the weekends started to revolve around going outdoors rather than getting smashed. Eventually I made the biggest change and moved to Colorado to persue more outdoors.
If the pandemic never happened I would probably still be living in the city going to bars and clubs. So while there are many negative things about the past two years, for me it ended in a net positive.
This feels like a red flag on the conclusions.
How does this compare to a normal time period? I wouldn’t be surprised if the random ups and downs of growing up normally resulted in a distribution where 1/3 of students claim they felt happier, 1/3 of students claimed they felt the same, and 1/3 of students felt worse than the prior year.
Journalists are so desperate to publish hot takes on COVID that we’ve forgotten that people’s lives normally change over time.
This sounds to me like a distinction without a difference. In both cases, the net result would be approximately 0 effect on the overall mental health of the population being studied.
I believe OP is saying that the underlying assumption here is that students do not get happier during their time during university without lockdown.
If for instance 2/3 students left university happier than when they started pre-lockdown/covid, this would need to be accounted for in any study to make it meaningful.
I think this is the crux of their conclusions too:
> While the pandemic has undoubtedly had negative consequences for many, it is important to keep in mind that this is not the case for all children and young people.
> In May 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, ED visits for suspected suicide attempts began to increase among adolescents aged 12–17 years, especially girls. During February 21–March 20, 2021, suspected suicide attempt ED visits were 50.6% higher among girls aged 12–17 years than during the same period in 2019.
According to this source[1] 1 in 25 attempts in youth are successful vs 1 in 4 for the elderly. That leaves a lot of room for "attempt discovery" statistics to meaningfully change without any meaningful changes in actual attempts.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_attempt#:~:text=The%20....
Sure, some have pointed out that billionaires have gotten better off, but that's a non-story--when has that not been true?
Also their “data” is two years old:
> More than 17,000 students took part in the June/July 2020 survey, during the tail end of the first national lockdown
Think the young people might report feeling different now?
Things seem bleak in america. Everyone is isolated. There's a housing crisis, a climate crisis, war and supply chain shortages everywhere.
Not sure what the point of this comment is, just wanted to vent.
I should feel happier than ever because of my new job but I've been depressed ever since my ex blocked me. I emailed her daily for about a year but she never responded so i stopped.
You don't have to go to an expensive city. If you are working remotely you can live anywhere and there are plenty of nice towns where housing is not insanely expensive.
Join a gym or a hiking club or something to get some physical activity and maybe meet some new friends.
This is complete bullshit. The US is a major outlier with the societal pressure to move out for no reason. It makes for poor family connections, wasted money, and wasted resources in general.
This is a big unsubstantiated implication you're making here. I fully agree that there is too much of a stigma against living with your family (though it has improved greatly over the past 10-15 years as surveys and studies have shown) in the US, but there are plenty of reasons to move out. This is coming from someone, by the way, who was convinced he'd probably stay living at home until 30 or so. I eventually realized it was holding me back.
Yes, relatively speaking it cost me a ton of money to move out, and I'd have a lot more money in my bank account right now if I didn't, but none of that money was "wasted" and I wouldn't trade it for anything or go back and do anything differently. It changed my life immensely, for the better.
I love my family but no matter how much you love your family there is no substitute for having a place of your own, and having the freedom and privacy to live your life the way you like, operate under your own rules, under your preferred hours, etc.
You're right, many people may not be ready for this, and living at home shouldn't be stigmatized - though perhaps parents who don't raise children who are ready for it at a reasonable age should be stigmatized.
But if you are gainfully employed and you have no mental conditions where being out on your own should affect you negatively, then moving out on your own is absolutely not a waste.
> The US is a major outlier
Despite all of its faults, the US is a major outlier in most things... in a good way. Yes, other countries and cultures may do things differently. But the individualist nature of the US is the keystone to what makes this country so great.
Billions of adults get by fine otherwise around the globe without moving out until they have children and even then moving out isn’t a given. It frequently just changes to the child owning a house and having the parents live in.
> But the individualist nature of
Pushing for strong families does not imply an emphasis on collectivism at the government levels.
Covid was definetely not good for my anxiety overall, and being socially isolated hurt a lot too. I couldn't see my girlfriend for months at a time, because we live in different countries in the EU. But for my studies, it did wonders. Lectures being recorded enabled me to watch them on demand and in different speeds. Online tutorials/seminars had far less of a hurdle to participate in. There was suddenly a record of most interactions over the course of a semester, making it far easier to prepare for exams. My job also moved online, so I saved a total average commute of 2 hours a day, which I was able to also invest in studying.
Now I'm very close to finishing, but next semester will be back in person, and while I'm a bit nervous about it, the last 2 years of actually reaching some form of success paved the way to control my anxiety enough to finish I think.
While I am very happy that things are opening up again, and some normalcy is restored, I really hope that we don't just go back to the old, because there were a number of things wrong, and I think a lot of it could be rectified quite easily.
> Ms Soneson and colleagues explored this issue using the OxWell Student Survey, a large, school-based survey of students aged eight to 18 years living in England. More than 17,000 students took part in the June/July 2020 survey,
A lot of people have spoken about the negative effects on children of lockdowns, social isolation and so forth. I'm glad to see a study pointing to the positives. Why? Because for a lot of people high school (in particular) is absolutely horrible normally.
In the US in particular we have a culture where bullying is tolerated ("boys will be boys", "toughen up") and the victims of bullying are treated like potential mass shooters.
It's actually like there is a systemic acceptance that some children will be chewed up and spit out for the social benefit of others. If that's not a microcosm of US culture I don't know what is.
Another finding comes to mine: girls tend to do better in same-sex schools. Boys tend to do better in mixed-sex schools. Again this seems like tacit acceptance that many of us are OK with girls being "expendable" for male student outcomes.
One upside of the pandemic is that it's challenged a lot of norms, such as having to be in the office. Likewise, the worker shortage we have now is probably the best thing for worker rights in the last 50 years.
In addition, your statement that girls are being treated as expendable to promote male outcomes flies in the face of the clear evidence that the current US educational system favors girls over boys -- heavily by 8th grade (https://ed.stanford.edu/news/new-stanford-education-study-sh...). _Why_ this is happening is not super clear, but the current system is certainly not throwing girls under the bus to improve outcomes for boys.
So, the students least affected by the lockdown were happy during the lockdown? I am not sure what to conclude here.
Otherwise, it would have kicked ass. Working from home these days, it’s honestly not that different from what it would have been anyway, had I not been dealing with them.
I truly love the ability to, I dunno; even just listen to my vinyl over my nice sound system while I work - or just making food at home…all the benefits and none of the loss whatsoever.
Post pandemic life as a WFH coder kicks ass! :)
Especially since I make some decent money on the side as a rapper/producer - it works so well. If I have an idea at work, I can easily take 30min off and capture it with my full studio rig. It’s amazing.
Zero loss. Full gain. Literally, there’s the drag of my life before the pandemic, and the joy of it after. I’d say during, too - but that asshole of an ex roommate really killed 2020 for me, sadly. :(
We are fickle, easy to forget. One day stuck in traffic or in a crowded bus/metro is enough to make you count your blessings. Speaking about WFH.
In my experience and from talking with friends and family, it wasn't the initial lockdown that took a toll on their mental health - it was the sustained lockdowns over a two year period.
The first lockdown was stressful and there was a lot of uncertainty, but it was also novel and exciting in a way with a sense of the entire world coming together to overcome something. After three or four lockdowns that no longer held.
This is a joke, but I do wonder if there isn't a kind of person who, whether we call it introversion or whatever, just isn't at all happy in the kind of modern environment where you have to interact a lot with strangers, where you have to be in a customer service or large office environment everyday, where you constantly have to be moving forward and mingling and so on.
They just want to...coast.
And they get the sense, somehow, that capitalism is to blame for how they feel, but, I don't know, maybe it's modernity itself.
Coasting is looked down upon.
I'd wager that even during the lockdown people interacted with more people then people in history interacted without a lockdown.
In consideration is not only internet but also cars and other forms of fast travel.
Too bad the government that locked us up doesn't care whether or not everyone has those things.
This is not to say that the lockdown made anybody happier.I'm willing to bet the causal factor is the fact that people experienced a little bit of isolation, "me-time", took a break from the daily noise(especially the majority of people who spend too much time on social media).
I want to see the more in-depth numbers: how many of those who reportedly stated that they felt happier during lockdown were using social media and/or were 'over-socializing' to the point that their own happiness was tied to other people's expectations?
But I am very prone to depression and living alone in a foreign country didn't help..
I don’t believe this headline for a second
You said it. Including before covid.
>while denying the simple science that some people might feel differently about socialization than others.
Yeah, It certainly is just "differently", can't be worse. That's why depression is sky high among the youngs, loneliness and isolation is reported as having rocketed, and so on (and that's already pre covid).
Well, since it works out so well for them...
Don't know what kind of students you're thinking about - I can't imagine anyone more intensely social than a group of freshers?
[1] https://abcnews.go.com/US/teens-spend-hours-screens-entertai...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/mar/02/nearly-four-...
[3] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/05/01/6065885...
https://www.bu.edu/articles/2021/campus-life-why-are-student...
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jul/20/lonelin...
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/jun/13/young-a...
[5] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
Now, even though 2003 is already after the start cutoff date (a first major development being the web's post-1994 huge adoption), the contrast between it and say 2013 (in between which dates smartphones and social media were widely available) would already releal huge changes in those aspects.
Except if the changes became invisible even to someone in contact with students in a kind of "boiling the frog" incremental familiarity (where it had been slowly but steadily increasing each year, but the infra-year difference didn't seem important).