Can we save our teens from being a lost generation? The experts weigh in

Adolescent suicides have shot up, sexual violations among the youth are at an all-time high and many youngsters are not receiving an education.

These facts are alarming, but some experts say it’s important not to blame it all on the coronavirus pandemic with black-and-white thinking that lacks nuance and creates a false “before-and-after” line from when the pandemic began.

Also, social media is not all bad for the youth and we need to take stock of its benefits too, they say.

Speaking at a webinar organised by Accelerate Hub on Thursday, Priscilla Idele, a deputy director at Unicef, asked those present: “Can we avert a lost generation of adolescents while the pandemic rages on?”

Accelerate Hub is an interdisciplinary team that focuses on adolescents across the globe and is led by the UK’s Oxford university and the University of Cape Town (UCT).

Idele said 1.2 billion adolescents worldwide have been affected in one way or another, but for many the problems they face predate the pandemic.

“Before Covid-19, only half were enrolled in education. The youth are blighted by low levels of literacy and numeracy. They face weak job prospects and the challenges of a planet under major strain,” she said, adding that indicators of poor mental health were clear.

“Self harming and suicide have gone up at an alarming rate,” she said, adding that mental health disorders were “reaching affluent and less affluent countries alike”, as well as hitting the wealthy and poor within countries.

Before Covid-19, only half were enrolled in education. The youth are blighted by low levels of literacy and numeracy.

—  Priscilla Idele, Unicef deputy director

According to Oxford and UCT professor Lucie Cluver, disruption of health services had impacted the youth and the emphasis on online learning was “out of touch”, since a third of adolescents cannot access digital devices, while some cannot even access proper nutrition when schools are shut.

According to mental health expert Prof Mark Tomlinson from Stellenbosch University, “a sense that everything is broken and we need to rush in and fix things” takes away from the nuances and personal stories of what youth are experiencing and how they’re coping.

“We know that in many cases it [the pandemic] has been catastrophic. But we cannot generalise,” he said, adding that for some of the adolescents he had engaged with, “lockdown came as a relief from being bullied at school” and that those who are “isolated and marginalised at school” had experienced a sense of freedom and creativity by not being at school.

That said, he added: “I absolutely know there will be educational consequences, but I also think we have to have this other focus, on some of the positives.”

Examples he cited included migrant labourers, especially fathers, who got to stay at home with children and be “far more engaged” with them.

According to Prof Vikram Patel, from Harvard University in the US, “suicide is up among all ethnic groups, but that comes before the pandemic”.

He said in the US there had been “an astonishing increase of adolescent suicides, with a 50% rise in just the last 10 years”.

“That is a rise like no other disease and it is not just an American phenomenon. Even in countries with more equitable health systems, we are seeing the same thing,” said Patel.

But, he added, “this massive increase has gone unnoticed. Something pretty awful is going on.”

He said research uncovered an astonishing fact: that in 2019, one in five undergraduate females had experienced non-consensual sexual acts and this included “at some of the most privileged institutions in the world”.

He also said many adolescent mental health woes are blamed on social media, but that “it’s far more nuanced than that”, with a significant number of youngsters describing it as “having an enabling effect on them, especially during the pandemic. At the same time, a quarter said it has a negative effect, so we need to be nuanced in our thinking.”

With the bigger picture beyond the pandemic, adolescents are “bedevilled by some real structural challenges, such as environmental concerns and the fact that the social fabric in many countries has been torn apart by hate-based politics”.

“There has been a breakdown in social capital and harmony, and all of this was happening even before Covid-19 came along,” said Patel.

However, the pandemic has “massively amplified inequities that already exist”.