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One in three young people say they felt happier during lockdown

cam.ac.uk

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

#101

Post by nemetroid »

pembrook wrote: post #19

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 "…

> Guessing if they measured satisfaction on a scale, the majority were clustered near the "no major change" camp, as with any gaussian curve.

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).

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

#102

Post by dionidium »

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 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.

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

#103

Post by _Nat_ »

pembrook wrote: post #19

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 calls out exactly one quote:

> 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.

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

#104

Post by klyrs »

gunfighthacksaw wrote: post #5

The pandemic started towards the end of my masters and beyond the initial “oh shit” moment, I actually found it way better than I expected because for the first time in my life it was not weird for me to just stay at home, enjoy my own company and reduce socializing by a factor of 5 or more. 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…

Among my peers, there's a pretty big split between people who have a social life outside of work, and people who don't. The folks who have a family, especially, see time spent commuting as a detriment to both work and family. For those highly social coworkers, the lockdown (and enduring resistance to commuting) has been a big negative.

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

#105

Post by _Nat_ »

bavell wrote: post #38
lemmsjid wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The highest proportions of students who reported improved mental wellbeing were among those who were in school every day (39%) and most days (35%), while the highest proportion of students who reported worse wellbeing were those who attended just once or twice (39%). 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 dis…

> 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.

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.

---

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.

---

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.

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

#106

Post by logifail »

ipaddr wrote: post #99
Thlom wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not following why if kids are happy homeschooling and socializing on popular video games is a negative? 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.

> I'm not following why if kids are happy homeschooling and socializing on popular video games is a negative?

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.

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

#107

Post by karaterobot »

pembrook wrote: post #19

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 "…

I mean, I wouldn't expect the distribution to be normal. It would also be interesting if the headline was "1 in 3 young people say they don't mind getting run over by a truck". You'd think things which are generally viewed as negative would tend towards a biased distribution, so if that's not the case I'm interested.

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

#108

Post by gdfgjhs »

gunfighthacksaw wrote: post #5

The pandemic started towards the end of my masters and beyond the initial “oh shit” moment, I actually found it way better than I expected because for the first time in my life it was not weird for me to just stay at home, enjoy my own company and reduce socializing by a factor of 5 or more. 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…

I think I would have enjoyed pandemic a lot more if I was not married or had kids. It was nice to get out of so many boring social obligations. I tried to play more video games, caught up on various shows, picked up new hobbies, creatively socialized like hiking, or meeting outdoors.

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.

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

#109

Post by t-writescode »

gdfgjhs wrote: post #108
gunfighthacksaw wrote: post #5

The pandemic started towards the end of my masters and beyond the initial “oh shit” moment, I actually found it way better than I expected because for the first time in my life it was not weird for me to just stay at home, enjoy my own company and reduce socializing by a factor of 5 or more. 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…

I think I would have enjoyed pandemic a lot more if I was not married or had kids. It was nice to get out of so many boring social obligations. I tried to play more video games, caught up on various shows, picked up new hobbies, creatively socialized like hiking, or meeting outdoors. 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…

Grass is greener. I spent the last 2 years wishing I had someone to be with.

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

#110

Post by brimble »

Thlom wrote: post #88
DocTomoe wrote: post #56

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.

By the time kids are old enough that suicide starts to become a serious risk (6th grade and up, mostly) I'd need to see some serious data to convince me that socializing at school isn't net-harmful. In fact I'm surprised rates might have dropped, because kids were still able to socialize over the Internet. But, possibly, that gave them more ability to avoid the worst of it, and that was enough to make a difference.

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.

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