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In this article, we explore the perspectives of 13–15-year-olds living in Sweden about the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, through inductive analysis of 187 of their drawings. Through reconstructive serial picture analysis, three types of meaning were derived: (1) A new normal in dystopian scenery points to the disruption of daily life and development of new praxis and meaning in a context of threat and restriction; (2) Disrupted relationships refers to these adolescents’ self-portrayal as solitary, without adult guidance or friends prominent; and (3) Negative emotions and compliant behaviors addresses a range of negative emotions and expressions of loss with few proactive strategies illustrated. General existential distress appears in these drawings, seemingly compounded by both developmental stage and other factors in addition to the pandemic context. Drawings suggest a restricted repertoire of ways of dealing with challenges confronting these adolescents, who seemed to feel left to their own resources.

People in contemporary society are increasingly being addressed as agentic individuals who are held responsible for personal aspects of their life and beyond. These personal aspects contain the design and organization of one’s life path in terms of, e.g., (lifelong) education, work and retirement planning, health care, work-life balance, and happiness; or with regard to more abstract concepts like sustainability, individual subjects become responsible for the future of the ecosystem on a planetary scale. This individualization includes on the one hand potential empowerment of the subject to actively shape one’s own life, and on the other hand, it tends to ignore relevant socio-economic processes, scope, and power relations, which unfold as implicit and explicit social restrictions and potential pressure. Subjects navigate through such contexts with a compulsion to control faith and course of life by their decision-making, behavior, and an overall urge to optimize the self. This special section on individualization contains (a) an editorial frame of individualization within contemporary developments in a neoliberal context and (b) empirical contributions around the processes of individualization in various conditions such as the housing crisis in Berlin, career trajectories, and incorporated neoliberal ideology when opting out of a corporate career, pseudo individualization in Indian television commercials, and leisure activities alongside the example of soccer and related fan-group dynamics interpreted as an escape from the pressure to singularize.