Essay Sample on Emerging Adults: COVID-19

📌Category: Coronavirus, Education, Health, Pandemic
📌Words: 1111
📌Pages: 5
📌Published: 08 April 2022

On March 13th, 2020, the world felt like it had shut down. People around the world were confused and did not know what steps to take. A viral disease was spreading around and fears of a global pandemic started to rise. As those fears turned into a reality, cases of Covid began to rapidly increase- affecting students, workers, and families across the world. The virus had caused a shutdown in the world and how things were run, which caused many interruptions in the lives of incoming adults. As juniors and seniors (17-18-year-olds) in high school were getting prepared to move onto a huge part of their life known as emerging adulthood, covid had changed the way their transition would be executed. Covid had taken a huge toll on how many emerging adults would experience this new normal of independence through a global pandemic. In these critical years that lead to these students becoming adults, social life is key, however, with the shutdowns being placed all over the country, interactions with other people became rare. With the risk of social life becoming rare, it is important to understand that there could be negative effects on these incoming adults. This paper will discuss the social life of emerging adults and how Covid-19 affected their lives. 

During the initial wave of shutdowns due to covid, emerging adults considered that time as a small mental health break from life. Students felt refreshed and were ready to get back to work. Many schools throughout the United States had informed their students that they would be back after 2 weeks, but nearly 2 years later, things are barely getting back to normal. While social life in person decreased, social media started to take over. In a study conducted by over one thousand students, the majority of those students would spend 1.5-10 hours on social media during covid-19 (Chaturvedi et al., 2020). Looking at this information, we can see that many emerging adults resulted to social media to keep interactions with their peers and close friends. Why is emerging adulthood and social life so important? Having a social life helps students transition easier to adulthood. During the process of emerging adulthood, students are leaving their childhood homes, their hometowns, etc. to pursue their dreams. Having a social life with friends and family helps one transition easier (Barry et al., 2015). The result of social media can be seen as a positive reaction from students as they should feel the need to want to reach out in these years of gaining independence. Aside from social media, a lot of gaming platforms started to gain attraction. For example, a popular game discovered during the pandemic known as AmongUs had brought people around the world together. Friends would be able to communicate and feel a sense of having their social lives back. Being stuck at home for multiple days is hard for most people, so being able to disconnect from reality and be with your friends was crucial to the development of emerging adults. 

As 18-23 years old’s started to realize they would be stuck at home, many resulted in physical activities to get more time with each other. In another study conducted with responses from 1000+ individuals - many being emerging adults - over 50% started to use their time towards exercising for 1-5 hours a day (Chaturvedi et al., 2020). Social interactions indoors were becoming rare, so physical activities outside helped these individuals get the time they wanted with each other. Social life was redefined for everyone during this global pandemic and is the new normal. However, the other percentage of students who did not result in physical outdoor activities were affected when it came to their social lives. Being stuck at home with a toxic family, or even a dysfunctional family, negatively affected the mental toll of those emerging adults alongside their lack of no social presence. 

Understanding that emerging adults were going through a once-in-a-lifetime experience that seemed like it would last for a while, schools had to result in different types of teaching models. Education is yet another huge part of emerging adults as they gain many social experiences through insight from peers. A company, Zoom, had become widely popular and school districts around the country used their platform to help connect students and their teachers. When looking at the popular video conferencing app’s statistics, over 300 million individuals were using Zoom daily (Iqbal, 2022). This number largely represents students who could be identified as emerging adults. The importance of education for these new adults is beyond belief as they are in the stage of life where they now need to make their own decisions. Being educated significantly helps one make their own mature and well-developed opinions. 

Covid-19 significantly changed the future for emerging adults as no one was prepared for a global pandemic during those crucial years. It is obvious that social life has a huge impact on these new adults as data shows that many resulted to social media and physical activities outdoor to keep their social batteries charged (Chaturvedi et al., 2020). Being in a condition where you cannot have indoor activities or meet with people outside your family causes a huge disruption in the development of one's life. Social media helped keep peoples’ social lives somewhat afloat amid covid-19. Aside from social media and physical activities outdoors, gaming platforms, zoom, etc, all positively contributed to emerging adults. Taking advantage of the technology we have produced throughout the years is effective, especially when it helps one feel surrounded by people they love. Having no social interactions in person during covid had many negative effects, but being able to use the services we had at the tip of our fingertips significantly improved the statuses of these 18-23-year-olds. Personally, throughout covid, having social media helped improve my overall social life. As an extrovert, being stuck at home was the worst and I needed to surround myself with the people I love in order to keep myself afloat. Zoom, Facetime, Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, and so many other platforms not only brought me together with my friends, but the whole world, and without those services, I doubt anyone would currently be able to regain their social status. Going from seeing friends and other peers every day to almost no interactions with them was hard to adapt to, but taking advantage of the technology we have developed helped everyone. Using the information given in this study, it is safe to say that emerging adults heavily rely on social media and other aspects of life now to control the social exposure of their lives. 

References:

Aboulezz, O. (2021, February 7). How zoom won the pandemic. Digital Innovation and

Transformation. Retrieved March 19, 2022, from https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-digit/submission/how-zoom-won-the-pandemic/

Barry, C. M. N., Madsen, S. D., & DeGrace, A. (2015, November 1). Growing up with a 

little help from their friends in emerging adulthood. Oxford Handbooks Online. Retrieved March 19, 2022, from https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199795574.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199795574-e-008

Chaturvedi, K., Vishwakarma, D. K., & Singh, N. (2020, December 25). Covid-19 and its 

impact on education, social life and mental health of students: A survey. Children and Youth Services Review. Retrieved March 19, 2022, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019074092032288X

Iqbal, M. (2022, March 3). Zoom revenue and usage statistics (2022). Business of Apps. 

Retrieved March 19, 2022, from https://www.businessofapps.com/data/zoom-statistics/.

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