Generation Corona

The Pandemic Is Changing Our Children's Lives for the Worse

Children are bearing much of the burden of the corona crisis. They are afraid, listless, bored and helpless - and many are developing psychological scars. What can be done?

Four siblings, three boys and a girl, all teenagers, are sitting at the living room table together with their mother in Weissenhorn, a town near the city of Ulm, with wood burning in the fireplace and two cats prowling around. Two of the boys are wearing caps, the daughter has braces and is tapping something into her smartphone. Having four teenagers under one roof is complicated enough in normal times. But in a pandemic, it’s an even greater challenge.

"My children don't have any room to breathe because of the corona measures,” says their mother Sylvia, who asks that their family name not be used in this article. She is divorced and her oldest son is studying at university in Munich. Sylvia says her children have become lethargic because of the lack of social contact. Having to just hang around is driving them crazy. In the beginning, the siblings played cards or chess together, but not anymore.

"Instead, it’s extreme internet consumption,” she says. "They’re fleeing into their own ideal world. I think it’s a protective reaction.” She says the kids have begun fighting over little things and sometimes get loud and aggressive with each other, almost coming to blows.

Leonard, 19, plays soccer three times a week and coaches a youth team. But he can't do any of that during the lockdown. He’s also the drummer in a death metal band called Haunted Cemetery, but the last time they practiced together was in March. They had concerts planned, and 200 hats and sweatshirts they planned to sell to fans are just lying around. He has a computer and a gaming chair in his room, with empty candy packages lying on the floor.

Read more:

https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/generation-corona-the-pandemic-is-changing-our-children-s-lives-for-the-worse

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Imagine a world without K-pop. To some, this would seem a utopia, but for super-fan Lee Ga-hyeon, not getting to see her favorite group, BTS, this year, was a tragedy. “BTS is like a vitamin for me, but the coronavirus took it from me which made me really angry,” she told Reuters, describing her BTS posters, lookalike dolls, and bedsheets that adorn her home near Seoul.

Hers was one of 10 stories compiled by Reuters in a feature describing how members of Generation Z are concerned “that their lives may have taken a worse hit from Covid-19 than their predecessors, the Millennials, suffered after the 2008/09 financial crisis.” These young adults, Reuters explained, are at risk of “what economists call ‘scarring’, or long-term harm to earnings, training, career prospects and even mental wellbeing.”

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/510753-reuters-genz-affected-coronavirus/

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Lives that had been focused on school, university, sports or even going to K-pop concerts vanished overnight for members of Gen Z as the global pandemic struck.

While a lot was heard about older people at risk from COVID-19, this younger generation - born between the late 1990s and the early 2010s - also saw their worlds turned upside down in 2020.

Reuters profiled 10 young people around the world to learn how their lives had been affected by the coronavirus.

Read more:

https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/scarred-by-2020-gen-z-looks-to-a-covid-free-future

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SPORTS

The challenges COVID-19 poses for youth sports

COVID-19 has raised questions about how to keep young athletes motivated during lockdowns. Experts warn that the longer they are forced to stay inside, the harder it will be to get them back onto the playing field.

"Hello everyone, after a long time of reflection our son has decided to leave the club."  

This is the Whatsapp message that a young football player's parents wrote in a parents' group of a regional league football team recently. That's the highest-level of football in Germany for players under the age of 17. The 14-year-old, who was the best striker on his team, decided to give up the sport. The decision came as a bombshell for both teammates and parents – including his own. 

Professor Hans-Georg Predel of the German Sport University Cologne says the lack of training and play due to COVID-19 restrictions is likely to have been a factor in the youngster's decision. 

"This could also mean an end to his sporting career," he told DW.  

However, according to the professor, who is a researcher in physical activity and high-performance exercise in childhood and adolescence and as well as in biological adaptations in high-performance athletes, behavioral patterns among 10 and 18-year-olds are quite inconsistent. 

Read more:

https://www.dw.com/en/the-challenges-covid-19-poses-for-youth-sports/a-55977439

With the Covid-19 pandemic and ensuing lockdown restrictions, plus a US presidential election that sucked up everyone’s attention, 2020 provided a plethora of opportunities for celebrities to virtue signal and prove their SJW bona fides.

Luckily, however, the woke beast that is the collective political thought bubble pushed by Hollywood also saw some significant pushback from fellow artists unwilling to keep quiet. Here is a look at the 10 who found the most success calling out the hypocrisy and speaking truth to power. 

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Musician and author Nick Cave will never be someone accused of not being willing to tell it like it is, and he did exactly that in a letter this year posted to his website torching cancel culture as “mercy’s antithesis.”

“Political correctness has grown to become the unhappiest religion in the world. Its once honourable attempt to reimagine our society in a more equitable way now embodies all the worst aspects that religion has to offer (and none of the beauty) — moral certainty and self-righteousness shorn even of the capacity for redemption,” he wrote.

Cave of course made waves with liberals whose contentment is entirely based on their belief that they are righteously doing battle for the betterment of mankind when they slap some keys on a laptop and attack anyone with differing opinions.

There were few responses to Cave’s actual points though and mainly just accusations based on his being white and straight and, therefore, unable to have an opinion on the matter, proving the singer is right that cancel culture is simply “bad religion run amuck.”

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/510935-top-anti-woke-celebrities/

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