Enlight 21

Social Distancing Among Teens

Author: Jake Kim | Category: Lifestyle | Date: 04-18-2020

Social interactions, especially for teens, is an extremely important thing. As social animals, humans are built to interact with each other. However, the number one thing that should always be taken into consideration is safety. During the coronavirus outbreak, social distancing was encouraged by virtually every nation. These two divisive factors have imposed a dilemma on teens.

Some may bring up that teens aren’t completely deprived of social interactions, since they always have their family to talk to. But those who are familiar with a teenager’s mindset would be well aware that most teens are can’t even handle the amount of family interactions even before social distancing was encouraged. So, do teens really abide by this new rule? And, if so, how do they do it?

From my own observations, most teens do stay at home, or at least don’t meet up with friends. There are several reasons for this. First, many teens tend to be lazy. Once they’ve got the habit of staying home all day, it’s hard to revert back to frequent physical activities. Another reason is that teens are aware that these are troublesome times and that even if they aren’t the ones vulnerable to the pandemic, their parents and grandparents most definitely are. Next, teens are relatively busy. Especially with messed up sleep schedules and severe procrastination, teens may feel like they have a lot more work than usual. And in some cases, teens are busy even with a tidy lifestyle. With remote extracurriculars or particularly large school assignments, teens are too busy to actually meet up with friends outside. Even when teens do go outside, they don’t usually go out to meet friends, but to get some exercise. Since there are many ways to contact friends, such as Zoom, Facetime, Discord, etc., teens are well aware that physical interactions are not the only way to quench their thirst for social interactions.

In my opinion, teens are keeping up with the social distancing orders relatively well. With all the different factors that affect their decision to leave the house and meet friends, I’m sure many would choose to meet online rather than physically.