Editor’s Note: Mary Francis Rasquel I’m a senior at Heathwood Hall Episcopulse School in Columbia, South Carolina.
CNN
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It was the first day that felt like spring in New Hampshire, where university students hang out in the long sun, swarming greenery in front of campus colonial buildings.
It wasn’t warm yet, at least for me. When I returned to South Carolina, the temperature was already in the 80s. However, the students on campus that I’m likely to attend university were just scattered in the grass anyway, with dozens of speakers playing different music and making fun noises.
It was a stark contrast to my first visit to university four years ago, when I was tagging my brother’s university tour.
The campus was empty as our cars traveled up and down the East Coast. No tours were offered for prospective students. None of the students laughed outside. Instead, one university had security guards in yellow shirts that ran around golf carts and ensured people walking outside were wearing paper masks. On another campus, an orange Resident Evil sign was posted on its edge, warning strangers to enter.
It was the 2020-2021 grade. I was in eighth grade when I was eating lunch outside on my winter court at school. I sat alone at the assigned spot. We had two kids at each end of the picnic table, 6 feet long (nearly 2 meters long) to maximize the distance between us. I carried a copy of a frayed paperback that was abused by JD Salinger’s “Franny and Zooey” Even after I finished reading it, in my pockets of too big coat.
Covid-19 regulations were full-scale in that grade. I felt lucky to be back to school for a lucky day, but I was the loneliest I’ve ever had.
It’s been five years since the Covid-19 lockdown began and I’m beginning to see how it has affected my generation. Magically, I almost forgot that it had happened. I blocked absurdity and loneliness.
That first covid year encouraged me to encourage mindfulness exercises, yoga, meditation, reflexes and diaries in my homeroom. You have the power to improve yourself and your life was their message. I sincerely hope – because adults understood that the isolation that comes with social distancing hurts us. But no one mentioned another possibility: if you have the power to change yourself for the better, you have the power to ruin yourself too.
If you have little opinions from your peers, if you don’t have friends to organize new ideas, new identities, and new interests in your real life, how can you know if you’re changing for the better?
There is a lot of research that adolescents need to be surrounded by their peers and have friends. Once the children reach puberty, they become increasingly independent of their families. It’s natural to separate us from our parents. Separation helps children become more autonomous and prepares them for adults when they attack themselves. Friends fill some gaps and help each other grow into new, more independent people.
If we place an entire generation, what happens if we are still growing, under quarantine and social distancing rules? And you do it, not days or months, but for years?
I think about children whose schools have been closed for more than a year, and children who have been self-detained for several months. If you are always with them, how can you start to separate from your parents? If they’re your only companion?
When schools closed in the last few months of seventh grade, I was with EC. It was a difficult year. We were all 13 or nearly 13 years old and suffered from adolescence. Acne, smell, mood swings, and massive physical changes bothered us. Going home for the last eight weeks of school felt like a rest I cherished.
Online schools were drugs, but I got through it. At home, I was associated with my brother. We were once so awkward to each other, so one of my mother’s biggest sadness was that we seemed to hate each other. I also approached my parents.
My friend and I still spoke via texting and group chat. There were dozens of people combinations and dozens of chats. But for me, they didn’t feel warm, communal or fun.
I feel disconnected and you’re in front of them, so you’re right there, so you’re there right away, so you’re separated from organic conversations where someone responds quickly, and from conversations that involve people who don’t know enough to text or group chat.
I think I was lucky. My time at home was freed and family-centric. I miss my friends, but that was a lazy, half-thinking longing.
In August 2020, I returned to school in person for the 8th grade. At school, my friend was right in front of me, but was uncontrollably unreachable. Our desks were far apart and we were all masked. You could no longer whisper to your friends.
Except during a short break, you can barely speak. Still, we had to be masked and standing far away. It was difficult to read the formula. We all lived in the same space, but I didn’t feel like we were together.
It has become our moral obligation to be lonely. There were coloured reminders everywhere to stay six feet away. If we were separated from others, we were told that we were empathetic, caring, and good members of society and “protecting each other.”
If you see someone hanging out with someone maskless nearby, they have to be bad people. They must be selfish. They should not care about human life. They don’t want to protect society. This is what we were told. To feel intense guilt over the once-accepted desire for human relationships. Being separated from people was praised for being moral good.
It seemed like new expectations had permeated American life. It’s okay to be alone. Otherwise, we would have been weak and bad.
But what does it do when children internalize the idea that they are bad, careless people if they want to spend time with friends?
Young Americans (ages 18-29) suffer from profound social effects five years later, according to a March 2025 poll from the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Political Science in Cambridge, Massachusetts. One in five people became more socially isolated.
Of the young Americans who reported social isolation during the pandemic, 55% also reported depressive symptoms. Even among those who said the pandemic had no long-term impact on friendship, 38% still reported depressive symptoms. Half of all surveyed said they felt a sense of community in their current lives.
This study also showed that current quarantine rates differed by age. Researchers found that the highest level of segregation was reported among those enrolled in the first year of high school and college during lockdown. These children, now 19 and 23 years old, had quarantine rates of 38% and 40%, respectively. Of those 20 years old, only 23% reported social isolation.
Looking back, five years later, I don’t know who was now, without Covid’s restrictions. If me and the rest of my generation experienced a more typical path to adulthood, I don’t know what happened. What if we were surrounded by our peers to help shape our growing self in the important early years of adolescence?
It feels like you’ve missed something essential to growing up, but you don’t know what. And I know I’m actually one of the luckyest people of my generation. I have kind parents, I was happy at home, my school resumed as soon as possible, and the teachers and staff there cared deeply about our happiness and did everything they could to support us.
I carried the book in my jacket pocket and as a talisman. I saw myself in the main character, Franny. She was older and cooler than me, but she was also trying to understand her place in the world and who she was. What I loved about Franny was that when she tried to change her life for the better, she completely failed. She sent a spiral into an emotional meltdown of mental pain and confusion. She was a warning that I remember as I was preparing to enroll in college in a few months.
I reread “Franny and Zooey” Every year, I go to university wherever I go. Franny may have started my love for books, but it was the advice of brother Zoe to her that I brought it into my pocket like a religious medal. You can’t see yourself separately like others. You cannot personally grow your sadness in the world state. To cut yourself off from people is to lose your connection and path in a glorious, terrifying world.
In Covid’s depression and lonely days, that idea was a lifeline.
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