Never Alone, Always Lonely EXPLORING THE GENERATIONAL AND SOCIETAL SHIFTS IN TEEN CONNECTIONS Story and Illustration by Tori Thorp
W
alking into the leadership class-
room for the first time since the pandemic, senior and student body president Sid Holloway was looking forward to seeing the smiling eyes of her peers and working to improve the school as a tightly-knit team. Unexpectedly, that wasn’t the scene she was greeted with. Before school transitioned to fully virtual, Holloway recalled, leadership was a very “interconnected” class, with committees of students all working toward their respective goals. An environment that fostered mutual respect and appreciation. That
camaraderie isn’t completely absent now, but there’s something holding it back from reaching the same level. “We’d go into our big committee room and we’d be trying to brainstorm,” Holloway said, “and I’d look around, and half our committee would be on their phones.” As the year went on it became increasingly clear that eyes cast down and periodical glances at phones were the new normal. A lot had changed, and students’ relationship with technology was no exception. “So Ihde said he was gonna start taking phones,” Holloway said, “and people were annoyed, to say the least. Especially the people who weren’t in leadership before the pandemic, because that was their new normal. Well, that was T H E W H I R LW I N D
their normal, not even their new normal.” This shift in attitude toward communication among teens is a widespread phenomenon that has been slowly increasing as technology progresses. However, when the pandemic hit, the process was accelerated. Phone and screen overuse has become more common in young peo-
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I’D LOOK AROUND, AND HALF OUR COMMITTEE WOULD BE ON THEIR PHONES. 28
ple, amplifying the division between students during in-person interactions. “The research is pretty sound on this,” Biology teacher Shana Hains said. “Your generation is more open to the world than any generation before you, and yet as much access as you have, you’re lonelier.” As a teacher, Hains has watched the evolution of how teens interact with the world around them first hand. From a biological perspective, the correlation between excessive screen use and dysfunctional mind and body systems is significant. “There’s so many variables with human behavior, but what [psychologists] are seeing is that absolute direct correlation between screen time and happiness,” Hains said. Studying a topic as convoluted as mental health is difficult and has to be approached as “soft-science,”
