I heard someone on a podcast talking about the struggles of young people today, and one reason cited was growing up in the “COVID era.”
It’s not the first time I’ve heard this phrase:
“The COVID era.”
There is no official length of time to determine an era, but I’m not sure if I would define the two-year period of the pandemic, from March 2020 through the spring of 2022, when the federal mask mandate on airplanes, trains, buses, and transportation hubs ended, as an era.
By then, vaccines and boosters were widely available. Omicron had already swept through the country. Schools and businesses had largely reopened and were functioning normally. Large gatherings had returned. For most Americans, the psychological calculation had shifted from “COVID might kill me” to “COVID is something I may eventually get and probably survive.”
Not for everyone, of course, but for most Americans.
I’m not implying that the pandemic wasn’t a terrifying, life-altering time in American history during which more than a million people died, and Americans’ lives were forever changed.
But it lasted about two years.
I’m not sure if I would call this an era, nor would I say that anyone “grew up” in that era.
By most standards, it takes at least 18 years for a person to grow up.
Two years is about 11% of that time.
Kids still had about 90% of their growing-up to do outside the pandemic.
Admittedly, those years were more harmful to some than others.
If you were a preschool child first learning to socialize, read facial expressions, and connect with human beings, the pandemic was likely far more damaging to your social development. So, too, it was hard on kids graduating from high school or college who lost their final years with friends, teachers, and their community.
Again, I’m not implying the pandemic didn’t do significant damage, but as eras go, I’m not sure 25-30 months amounts to one, and “growing up” in that time seems a little melodramatic, too.
September 11, 2001, for example, was a single day, but its consequences — forever wars, terrorism fears, the subsequent anthrax attacks, dramatic changes in airport security, surveillance, military deployments — shaped childhood for years.
The AIDS epidemic lasted decades and involved extraordinary levels of death, fear, stigma, discrimination, and cultural change.
Children grew up during the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and the threat of nuclear annihilation. They grew up during the Great Depression, world wars, and the 1918 pandemic that killed far more Americans per capita than COVID.
Black children growing up under Jim Crow experienced a pervasive system of discrimination, economic suppression, violence, and murder that affected virtually every aspect of life — not for 24-30 months but throughout childhood and, often, throughout their lives.
None of that means “other generations had it worse, therefore COVID didn’t matter.”
It simply means that historical disruption is unfortunately normal.
An uninterrupted childhood is historically unusual.
And two years of a pandemic do not make an era.
Every generation of children is formed partly by circumstances adults wish they hadn’t experienced — wars, recessions, epidemics, political violence, racism, economic upheaval, technological changes, and natural and manmade disasters.
COVID surely belongs on that list.
But it doesn’t necessarily deserve to swallow the entire childhood surrounding it, nor should it be used as the primary excuse for the struggles of young people today.
Young people struggle today for a variety of reasons. COVID likely played a role for some, but many things are impacting children today beyond the pandemic, and “growing up in the COVID era” seems to put too much weight on one thing while ignoring much larger issues that have lasted longer and are far more profound.
“Growing up in the COVID era?”
That’s not how I would characterize it.
