By April 2020 about half of the world's population was under lockdown, with more than 3.9 billion people in more than 90 countries or territories having been asked or ordered to stay at home by their governments. Worldwide there have been 58,704,217 confirmed cases and 1,512,045 confirmed cases in the United Kingdom, deaths have come to a shocking number globally of 1,388,926 – this may not seem like a big number but these deaths have affected many families and many deaths have not yet been confirmed to be coronavirus related. On Friday 6 November 2020 redundancies in the UK shot up to 233,909 and people on furlough rose to 9,602,000 leaving many people alone at home without work. Only 1.7 million people in the UK worked from home prior to the coronavirus pandemic, an estimated 20 million people have now been relocated to home offices by their companies. How are schools coping with coronavirus and how is this affecting their students? The younger generation is said to not be affected by the coronavirus. But is this true?
Statistics and facts show you how much of an impact covid-19 has had on us and the physical impacts on our society but what about how this pandemic has affected us mentally.
The younger generation are our next leaders and caretakers. Do we realise that they might not be handling the sudden effects on our society that the coronavirus has caused in the best way possible? The 6-month lockdown we were put in at the start of 2020 came suddenly, without warning. Unstable homes struggle through these times and these young millennials had to adapt to sudden changes in the way they live – just like everyone else. For secondary school students in years, 10 and 11 as well as college and university students this pandemic could massively impact their future and change their lives.
Is the work that schools are setting for students enough to prevent them from falling behind when isolating? Are they even setting work and making themselves available for the student when they are in need of help? Do schools know how to cope with the new system is the big question and if so, how are they keeping these rules in place? As students, especially those in primary school, may not understand the importance of these rules. When at home will they know whether their students are falling behind, and will they check up on them to make sure they are managing their own time and work? They should be able to understand the struggle these kids may face when at home and help them get through this by explaining what is happening and not leaving them in the dark. How can they encourage students after school to not break the rules and help them understand why they shouldn’t do this?
Everyone thrives off of social interactions and these past months have meant we could only socialise with our household. For many people, especially the older generations, this meant they were alone whereas the younger generations were not as they had their families or caretakers. Some people coped well with this as they adapted to the new way of life because they had the support of their friends or family often through social media. What if you didn’t have either of these though? Coronavirus lockdown has led to an increase in suicides, domestic violence, and sexual abuse. Doctors are saying that they have never seen numbers like this in such a short period of time, on May 22nd we’d already seen a year's worth of suicide attempts in the four weeks before. Clearly, these are adults as well suffering from unemployment, financial difficulties, fear of getting ill and dying as well as the isolation from everyone, etc.
In April 2020, 46.6% of people in employment did some work at home. Of those who did some work from home, 86.0% did so as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
So how does working from home affect people’s work ethic? Denise Sperling, Engineer for TFL, has had to adapt to working from home and quotes “It’s hard to stay motivated when you are isolated from your peers at work. You don’t really stop and think and socialise the same you would in an office, you don’t really get to talk to others and get their opinions on what you are doing. Sometimes it’s nice to check you’re not going in the wrong direction”. She tells us that working from home affects her mood and “it’s boring there is no change, no variety, my brain isn’t stimulated as much”. Social interactions are a big part of our everyday life, Denise tells us what it is like to lose that through work, “I miss the social aspect of work like talking about the work and just socialising, it affects my mood. I miss talking to friends, miss laughing with them, without these interactions it brings your mood down and I become jealous of people going to work and school”. While working from home you are expected to get more work done and Denise agrees and states “I feel expected to do more which causes stress as I’m doing additional work hours and not feeling motivated while doing so.” Does your home life interrupt your work? Denise states “Not so much now since everyone has gone back to work and school however in the first lockdown when everyone was home there were interruptions and distractions.”
A big part of working from home is that you feel you can’t separate your work life and home life however Denise feels she could not do this well before lockdown as she had to work from home in the evening and feels it hasn’t changed.
The older generation, especially those living on their own, have been highly affected and often lost the company of others. If they relied on social clubs – which have been shut down because of restrictions - they might not have any social interactions other than that and might feel lonely and bored. Many of the older generations don’t make much use of technology, or social media to keep in contact with people outside and might be scared of the whole situation and might not have anyone to talk about it with.
Is there anything good that might have come out of this pandemic?
Community spirit was increased and people came together, pollution decreased temporarily cleaning the air and water while making people more aware of global warming. It has given us more quality time to spend with our family and hopefully made people more aware of the importance of key workers.
