The malign effects of the Covid lockdowns continue to reveal themselves. The latest confirmation of the baleful legacy of that policy is a new survey which suggests that we are turning into a nation of hermits. According to a fresh study, reported by the Daily Telegraph, many people in Britain are still imposing lockdowns on themselves, four years after the last government-decreed lockdown. The survey of 2,000 British adults discloses that two thirds of Gen Z – and more than half of millennials – said that there are times when they do not go outside for days. This isn’t something that only afflicts the youth. Across all generations, the study related that a quarter of people make a conscious effort to step outside at least once a day.
Two thirds of Gen Z – and more than half of millennials – said that there are times when they do not go outside for days
Findings which indicate that Britain has become a dysfunctional hermit nation shouldn’t surprise us. This study comes only a day after a claim by Jonathan James, who runs the Select Convenience brand, that young people don’t want to work in retail outlets because they are scared of shoplifters.
That assertion is doubly significant. The epidemic of shoplifting since 2021 is yet one more symptom of a nation, particularly a youth, that has become anti-social, now possessing scant empathy for fellow citizens, having been deprived of contact with other human beings for two years. The manifest fraying of the social contract must be regarded as a consequence of those years of isolation.
But the reluctance and fear among the young to work in an public environment is telling, for the same reason that they are now disproportionately scared of leaving their homes. You could understand if the elderly were more afraid of placing themselves in a lawless retail setting these days, and in all other circumstances you would expect a stronger, more athletic and risk-taking demographic to be more undaunted in placing themselves in the front-line of this crimewave.
Alas, we all know that the younger generations have been the ones who suffered the most grievous, long-term consequences of the lockdowns. This was a policy imposed during their formative years, a time when they should have been learning to brave and navigate a new, challenging adult world and socialised into dealing with strangers.
They were deprived of this learning experience, and instead spent even more time walled-up at home in front of their screens, the long-terms consequences of which, as Jonathan Haidt has shown, do enough by themselves to heighten feelings of loneliness, insecurity and anxiety. Haidt does have a point in his thesis. But smartphones have been around since the end of the Noughties, and it is arguably only since lockdowns that the younger generations have shown signs of increasing, chronic unhappiness and distress.
The precipitous increase in mental health problems since 2021, encompassing depression and anxiety, has been another legacy. Only yesterday, a survey conducted by University College London of more than 1,500 people aged 16-25 found that almost two-thirds (64 per cent) reported having experienced or currently experiencing mental health difficulties.
Some people have attributed the growth in claims of ‘mental health problems’ to the ease with which the young can now access disability benefit, or simply a work-shy and indolent attitude. But this spike sits alongside corroborating findings of the deleterious social after-effects of lockdowns.
In January last year, for instance, figures showed that one in five pupils was reported to be ‘persistently’ absent from the classroom, a ratio that has been constant since March 2021, when schools fully re-opened. This represented an escalation from a figure of one in ten pupils who persistently missed school before the Covid pandemic, and more crucially, the Conservative government’s blunt response to it. Polling from the Centre for Social Justice indicated that more than one in four parents thought the pandemic had shown that it was not essential for children to attend school every day.
And that’s only the statistics. Reports of infants starting primary school barely able to communicate verbally or even being potty-trained have been further testament to the psychological consequences of forced lockdowns visited upon tender and unripe minds and bodies.
There remains, too, the scourge of working from home, a scourge that just won’t go away. This is still an urgent problem, because while working from home is fine for middle-aged professionals comfortable and settled in their jobs and large houses, the already mentally fragile and asocial young need to be in the office, where they can pick up the tricks of the trade, bounce ideas off colleagues, and learn from the wisdom and experience of their elders.
Those dreadful years of 2020-21 continue to cast a dark shadow, and I dare say that their full legacy is yet to be ascertained. Proof will no doubt continue to mount that the consequences of the lockdowns were far more devastating than the Covid virus itself.
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