Skip to main content
opinion

Josh Fullan is the director of Maximum City, a national engagement and education firm.

Early in this new year, which feels a lot like the old year, TVO host Steve Paikin tweeted about rising coronavirus positivity rates among children and teenagers: “It seems young people have to work harder to help us out.” The scold landed badly. The message was set upon by a mob who pointed to the hard sacrifices young people are making during the pandemic despite their lack of agency in any kind of decision-making. Meaningful schooling, play dates, team sports, graduations – all gone thanks to COVID-19. Mr. Paikin’s take smelled of a tired stereotype about socially irresponsible adolescents that goes well with the early 19th-century essay On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth, also referenced in his tweet, which he later deleted.

But what does the evidence say about Mr. Paikin’s inference? In two wide-ranging studies I led in the spring and fall involving more than 2,100 Canadian children and youth reporting on their pandemic behaviours and attitudes, it is clear that many are not feeling immortal with unbounded prospects before them. They are scared, bored, staying put and don’t see an end to the dim shadow of COVID. More than three quarters are worried about getting the virus; nearly all of them worry about how the pandemic is affecting their parents and caregivers. Kids, just like the rest of us, feel battered by the forces of the global pandemic and by governments forced to prioritize public health ahead of their well-being. They’re tired of Zoom calls, just as we are. They miss their friends and teachers and want to go outside without fear or a list of rules to follow. Put simply, they are deprived of the freedom of being joyfully themselves.

Some kids, however, are living their best lives through COVID, largely unscathed by restrictions and school closures. They get to sleep in and prefer learning online. Others report feeling calmer, happier, more independent, with more time to pursue their own interests, which may or may not include hanging out maskless in too-close groups (another Paikin tweet).

Self-reported well-being and physical activity levels, two key markers of health and happiness, improved overall among respondents from spring to fall. And among teenagers ages 13 to 16, more than a third report higher levels of empathy while more than a quarter feel a heightened sense of social responsibility compared to pre-pandemic. The crisis has made them reflect on their role as good neighbours and engaged citizens, precisely what this degraded era needs more of.

The evidence also tells us that, true to form, COVID affects young people unevenly and differently. It tells us not to assume what those effects are.

COVID is elementally an urban crisis, with 95 per cent of global cases in urban areas and 65 per cent of Canadian cases in our 20 largest cities. Unfortunately, this anti-urban trend holds true in our findings about the pandemic’s secondary effects on young people. Kids and teens who live in large and medium-sized cities, which include municipalities with more than 100,000 people, show worse outcomes across almost every healthy behaviour measure. In both the spring and fall, their declines in physical activity levels and sleep quality were more severe compared to peers in smaller municipalities and rural areas. The starkest differences are in time spent outside, which is evidentially linked to children’s happiness and correlates as a protective factor against worsening well-being. During the fall, half of children and youth in Canada’s largest cities did not go outside every day. In smaller cities, only 20 per cent didn’t go outside daily.

The pandemic has exposed planning gaps by further dividing us into those who have access to outdoor space for health and recreation and those who don’t. It should now be evident that parks and shared open space are not something decorative to be negotiated on the backend of a development deal but vital infrastructure.

With more than a third of Canadians living in our three largest cities, recovery efforts for children and youth will need to focus, at least partly, on the declines and deficits experienced by Canada’s most urbanized. An urban crisis calls for an urban solution. In the interim, time outdoors, physical activity and social interaction (even through a screen) might be the most effective three-part inoculation against the downstream health and well-being effects of COVID on young people.

Kids and teens do have agency over something incredibly important during the pandemic: their own actions, which have direct consequences for the health of their family and loved ones. What could be more vivid and powerful than knowing your daily behaviour can determine whether your parents or grandparents get sick or die? Messaging that seizes on this, and calls for young people to do their part, is certainly not out of place in times of crisis like this. But in order to stick and resonate, it should tap into the best parts of them rather than the worst: empathy, purpose and social good.

Keep your Opinions sharp and informed. Get the Opinion newsletter. Sign up today.

Follow related authors and topics

Authors and topics you follow will be added to your personal news feed in Following.

Interact with The Globe