Growing up under COVID 19: Insights into Impacts and Young People’s Responses to Changing Socio-Ecological Contexts as a Result of the Pandemic

Many studies about the impacts of the COVID 19 pandemic on young people have focused on young people as victims or villains in the crisis and with a predominant emphasis on their schooling. This paper draws on Participatory Action Research (PAR) with young people in the UK, Italy, Singapore and Lebanon to provide insights into impacts and changes on young people’s everyday personal, familial and social worlds using Bronfenbrenner’s socioecological framework. In doing so, the paper provides a more balanced view of the impact of the pandemic on young people including providing examples of how the pandemic has brought about new opportunities in terms of young people’s personal development, social actorship and political agency, in spite of its detrimental impacts. We apply the concept of ‘affordances’ to understand how young people have creatively, critically and reflexively responded to changes to the socio-ecological contexts that frame their lives. These are manifest through new social roles, identity development and a heightened sense of communitarianism, political awareness and active citizenship. The paper raises questions about what young people need in terms of nurturing environments to grow up in and highlights key considerations in safeguarding young people’s rights in future public health crises and post-COVID rebuilding.