Without having the daily structure of going to school, doing homework and then having some free time, it´s hard for teenagers to get along with this new daily routine. Suddenly they need to schedule their day completely by themselves. After finishing their tasks for school, there is so much time left, they don´t know what to do. Going out isn´t allowed, so they can´t meet up with friends. The only things to do then is sitting alone in their room and do something unproductive, like scrolling through social media or watching Netflix. Not going to school and see students from your grade or your friends, but instead being alone all the time can be really depressing, when it lasts as long as the shutdown did.
Even more affected are the students, who should have been graduating this summer. When the schools were getting closed, nobody knew for how long this should last. They didn´t know it will be their “last day” of school. It got even worse when the schools had to cancel their prom and graduation ceremony. I can´t imagine how shocked the teenagers were, when they heard this. Prom is a final day to celebrate what they achieved and saying good-bye to everyone. One student who is exactly in this situation even said, she feels like “the last four years of hard work have been for nothing”.
The statements of how much the teenagers are really affected by the consequences of the pandemic didn´t come out of nowhere. Students from all over the world were asked how they feel during the current situation and most of them answered with adjectives like frustrated, nervous, disconnected, anxious, upset and nostalgic. Christine L. Carter, a writer from the magazine called Psychology Today explained why the youth feels so bad: “Teenagers and college students have amplified innate, developmental motivations that make them hard to isolate at home. The hormonal changes that come with puberty conspire with adolescent social dynamics to make them highly attuned to social status and peer group.”

In my opinion, everybody is affected in their own ways, but for the generation who is growing up right now suffers from the situation the most. We just have to help each other and get through this pandemic as soon as possible.

When it first started infecting people in Bulgaria I started to be more careful. One day when everybody was minding their own business a news report said the general headquarters had announced that we are in lockdown. From that point I my life was not the same. For the next three months I almost never left my home. I was sitting on the computer all day because of online school. I was lazy and tired most of the time and in the seldom moments I went outside I did not have very much energy. I was also scared for my family. During online school it was hard for me to study properly, because it just was not the same.

Now everything is just a little more normal, but I have a gut feeling that the terrible three months I had experienced would repeat again.