The Kids Are / Not / Sort of All Right*

Abstract

We investigated changes in and factors affecting American adolescents' subjective wellbeing during the early months (April -August 2020) of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States. Twenty-one teens (14-19 years) participated in interviews at the start and end of the study and completed ecological momentary assessments three times per week between the interviews. There was an aggregate trend toward increased wellbeing, with considerable variation within and across participants. Teens reported greater reliance on networked technologies as their unstructured time increased during lockdown. Using multilevel growth modeling, we found that how much total time teens spent with technology had less bearing on daily fluctuations in wellbeing than the satisfaction and meaning they derived from their technology use. Ultimately, teens felt online communication could not replace face-to-face interactions. We conducted two follow-up participatory design sessions with nine teens to explore these insights in greater depth and reflect on general implications for design to support teens' meaningful technology experiences and wellbeing during disruptive life events.

The kids are alright: adolescents’ experiences during COVID-19 disruption

“…Changes to school were primarily negative and involved difficulties associated with online instruction and learning, as well as its detrimental impact on student emotions (e.g. decreased motivation and focus and increased stress); this is in line with the findings of Pitt et al (2021) previously discussed. However, some positive developments were also mentioned, including school being easier, instructors being more approachable, the opportunity to learn independently and having more time to participate in extracurricular activities.…”

“…Instead, we used a qualitative approach, relying on participants’ self-reports from our exploratory study (Krathwohl, 2009). Self-report, and specifically interview methods, has been used in earlier pandemic and pre-pandemic studies of adolescent experiences (Garg, 2021; Pitt et al , 2021). We designed a semi-structured interview script including general open-ended questions about an adolescent’s life and school experiences during the pandemic ( RQ1 ) and more specific questions about feelings of loneliness and ways of coping with loneliness and general life changes ( RQ2 ) (the copy of the interview questions with sources of inspirations for some of them is included in Appendix [1]).…”

“…ILS 123,9/10 During the pandemic, several studies examined adolescent use of technology in coping with the disruption. Through interviews and ecological momentary assessments of 36 adolescents, Pitt et al (2021) identified some key factors affecting adolescent wellbeing during the early months (April-August 2020) of the pandemic in the USA. These factors included pandemic-related worry, the transition to online school, increased family time and decreased time with friends.…”

Measuring the Impact of Conversational Technology Interventions on Adolescent Wellbeing: Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches

“…The research conducted during the pandemic highlights the important role of technology in connecting teens to friends, providing resources for learning and entertainment, supporting creativity and wellbeing, and enabling resilient practices (e.g., expressing emotions, maintaining a positive outlook, making meaning of the disruption, solving problems collaboratively; Garg, 2021;Lopatovska et al, 2022a;Pitt et al, 2021). In the context of our study, we specifically focused on previous studies of the supportive use of conversational technology.…”

A Qualitative Study of Social Media and Electronic Communication among Canadian Adolescent Female Soccer Players

“…In addition, electronic communication offers adolescents the opportunities to meet new people and freely choose with whom they wish to interact. This can also be beneficial when physical contact with others is difficult, for example, if peers live far from one another or during a pandemic, such as COVID-19, that requires physical distancing (e.g., Nesi et al, 2018a; Pitt, Hock, et al, 2021). Social categories can also be built and maintained through social media, and online categories provide opportunity for social comparisons of in-groups and out-groups and contribute to an individual’s sense of group identity and belonging (Trepte & Loy, 2017).…”