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One in three young people say they felt happier during lockdown

cam.ac.uk

111–120 of 130 posts

Re: One in three young people say they felt happier during lockdown

#112
I can believe this certainly in the first wave of lockdowns. I would wonder a lot however what happened in the 2nd/3rd and so on for places that had them. I do find it slightly annoying that there seems to be a default uncritical acceptance of the view that lockdown was universally terrible for kids mental health when I know first hand of several examples where it wasn't at all. I feel like some amount of that is a fig leaf over the fact that many kids are living in unhealthy environments at home to begin with. So lockdown means they are exposed to more of that, but it's not the lockdown causing the harm it is the home environment where they are exposed to harmful factors.

Re: One in three young people say they felt happier during lockdown

#114
This study was from the first lockdown period in June / July 2020, which I expect not to be strongly correlated with the way people feel now.

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.

Re: One in three young people say they felt happier during lockdown

#115
post #28

lockdown made me more depressed than ever. I had a breakup right before the lockdown and ended up overdosing on MDMA right at the start of it in april 2020. Overall haven't been able to recover emotionally or physically but I did get a better job that pays better than any job i've ever had. Eventually moved back in with my parents because it seemed pointless to live in a tiny new york appartment all alone and pay hig…

You should move to Florida. The pandemic has been over here for over a year.

Re: One in three young people say they felt happier during lockdown

#116
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would follow Dr Tyler Black, https://twitter.com/tylerblack32 for data on that. He reviews data (with source links) from multiple sources and provides interpretations, and imho a pretty good job of breaking down nuances in the data, how it is grouped and summarized vs the ground conditions. The CDC data was reviewed by him on this thread. This is perhaps the simplest summary: https://twitter.com/tylerblack32/status…

Notably from the graphic, not having school early in lockdown was great! Lower suicides. 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

I don't have kids or anything more than an academic interest, but from what I gathered, "hybrid/remote" involved the most brain-dead approach to learning environments possible. It seems/seemed like they just looked at the most popular videoconferencing options and used them as designed. From what I read, that did not provide a very good classroom simulation, and classroom simulations was the only option sought.

Re: One in three young people say they felt happier during lockdown

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to believe the same things, that politicians followed the general will of their potential voters. I don't anymore, and reading some Chomsky made me understand how the system works. "Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media" is suggested reading, with the caveat that it opens the readers eyes to a harrowing reality and that what has been seen cannot be unseen.

Agreed, once you read that book (or watch the documentary [0]) it sets you down a new path of understanding. However, you will feel alternatively annoyed or horrified every day of the rest of your life. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuwmWnphqII

It's good, but there has to be a better introduction than a 3hr documentary.

Re: One in three young people say they felt happier during lockdown

#118

I have sometimes joked that there's a kind of "socialist" whose politics seem mostly to be centered around the notion that in a post-capitalist socialist utopia they'd somehow just be able to stay home and not participate in anything. 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 hav…

Ambition and the pressure to always be ambitious has become kind of a performative dance you have to do to be taken seriously in certain circles.

Coasting is looked down upon.

Re: One in three young people say they felt happier during lockdown

#119
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Political leaders wanted kids back in school so parents would be able to go back to work. 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.

When kids can’t socialize normally with their peers that is negative for them, even if kids themselves might be happy with “homeschooling” and socializing with their friends in Minecraft. 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.

School has been extremely negative for me, because I did not socialize with anyone there. School easily makes it into the top 10 of harmful things in my life

Re: One in three young people say they felt happier during lockdown

#120

So 1 in 3 felt happier, 1 in 3 felt more depressed, and the remaining 1 in 3 felt no major change. 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 "…

The article contextualizes itself at the beginning. A large number of people believe the effect of the lockdowns on children was not a normal distribution but was skewed negative. So a normal distribution is news. This does not discount your argument that emphasizing the positive side of the distribution is clickbait, but if it is positioning itself as emphasizing that positive side to a population who thinks it is a…

My kid was a lot happier without school. I'd keep him out if I had the choice.
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