Apparition of Jack

Tell that to families living in apartments. Your attitude strikes me as very tone-deaf and callous.

We’re literally debating over screens right now lol, we’re not any better

Screens were the only way for kids to attend classes. Also if you’re locked inside a house 24/7 for months at a time, what else is a kid gonna do? You can try board games or baking but at some point you have to accept that social conditions can have a way bigger effect than any personal sense of discipline can handle

Your average kid in 2015 probably spent like 4 hours a day on their phone. After COVID that number has gone up to like 10 hours a day. How could it have no had effect?

Again, COVID made the problem 100x worse. It’s like saying Cartels aren’t a problem in Mexico because “drugs have always been around.” Yes that’s true, but the cartels have become far worse over the last few decades because of just how much more lucrative the US drug market has become in that time. Conditions change.

you might as well say the Vietnam War didnt cause PTSD because “trauma existed beforehand.” It’s just such a nothing statement completely removed from material reality. Just watch this video man. Doctors who deal with kids are literally saying the pandemic had widespread impacts on kids. Is he lying?

I don’t get why you’re so hung up on that number. Maybe it was only six months, maybe it was more, the fact is it had a huge negative impact on kid’s brains, not being able to physically engage with friends, schoolyards, etc. Like I don’t see why this is so hard for you to accept. This isn’t me saying that kids who spent a week off school because of a snowstorm all turned into weed smoking vagabonds, lol. Schools would have to open and close if a new wave of COVID came about. A lot of parents lost their jobs or had to work from home, making the living conditions even more cramped. We were basically prisoners whilst the virus was around, it obviously had negative mental health impacts on countless people. What about university students who had to drop out because all the facilities shut? What about people with kids who had to move in with their parents after they lost their job because of the pandemic? Im still really struggling to understand why this is so hard for you to accept. Teachers, parents, hell the bloody kids THEMSELVES are all saying they were seriously fucked over by the pandemic. Countless kids have said they’ve become anxious, can’t concentrate, feel isolated due to the effects of the pandemic and prolonged, sudden isolation of lockdown. Not to mention, again, the physical effects COVID can cause. What part of this is hard for you to accept? It’s not the “parents responsibility” to prevent a global disease breakout, no human being has that power, let alone two random office workers with a couple of school kids. What part of those reports do you disagree with? Why do you deny what teachers, counsellors, students etc are all saying about what COVID has done to them?

Didnt you get an education? Where did you learn to read and write? How did you learn to deal with other people (like learning how to not be a bully or learning how to get things done in a group?) again I’m not saying the education system we have is perfect, far from it in fact, but can we at least agree that having kids know how to read, know how to write, know how to do basic maths and know how to get along in a group is a good thing? I’m not saying educations only purpose is to turn everyone into rocket scientists or tech CEOs, obviously that’s not a reasonable goal. But it is destined to teach kids the basics of thinking, grammar and socialising they need to get by in the world (otherwise they turn into wolf children who only speak in barks lol)

That Mexican surgeon still also had an education though. It’s not like universities only exist in rich countries lol 💀 Also yes I agree, spending time in the country is one of the best things someone can do if they have access to it. But again, we’re talking about cities of millions of people. It’s not practical to just say if kids are struggling during lockdown everyone should just move to their lakeside cabin, especially when most people don’t own one of these.

Where do you live? Are you in the countryside? If you reject modern urban living, that’s good for you, really I’m under no illusions that modernity is perfect, but unfortunately that’s just not practical for a civilisation of hundreds of millions of people. Modern society has many problems but I don’t think trying to research cancer or make cars safer is one of them. We could absolutely make the world more environmentally sustainable, but that would still require education actually (how else do we build solar panels or use less water in our farming techniques?)

Sure dude. Because a bunch of asshole billionaires bribed their way into getting Ivy League degrees, that means we don’t need educated doctors, pilots, chemists, engineers, police commissioners, cancer researchers, etc etc. If a plane has a mechanic problem, no problem, just stick some duct tape on it! If someone has cancer? No problem, just take some aspirin! Who needs education right? If someone needs a kidney removed just ask dad for some scissors and he’ll sort it all out! 😂

Don’t make me turn into an asshole, dude. You might as well say eating food isn’t important to kids because they live off “kid energy” or some other vibes-based bullshit. Kids need school. I’m sorry you don’t think this is true, but it is. Maybe you’re right and education is a scam and kids don’t have feelings and we can basically throw them into the Amazon jungle and except them not to die, but I don’t buy it. I live on planet earth. Here on earth, education is important for not turning kids into illiterate malcontents. Feel free to fly on the next plane flown by a pilot who dropped at in Year 5 if education means so little to you.

OH YEAH. COVID also has associated neurological problems. Even mild cases can lead to brain fog, tiredness, etc. No shit you’re not going to be doing as well at school if your brain isn’t working 100%, no amount of “responsible parenthood” can fix that alone

Also, what about the fucking parents? A mum and dad can only organise so many socially-distanced play dates or try and teach their kids Grammar or whatever before they themselves have to get back to work, look after other family members, etc. I mean the literal reason we have schools is so that parents don’t have to look after and teach their kids 100% of the time. Schools is fucking ESSENTIAL to early childhood development; kids were denied this opportunity because of a DEADLY VIRUS ravaging the world.

Again, you’re putting the cart before the horse. Yes, families DID do this, but there’s only so many socially-distanced camping trips you can have before the dire need for in-person education (you’re not teaching Maths to your kids at Umina beach), socialising with other kids their age on a daily basis etc becomes pressing. Also, let’s not forget that many families can’t afford to do that shit all the time and rely on school to be the main source of education/trips/socialising for their kids. And again, ITS NOT ME JUST MAKING THIS UP. It’s observable fact. You have a problem with my argument, feel free to refute the evidence. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12574550/#:~:text=Impacts of COVID-19-Related,onset%3B Amplify%2C 2021).

Do you not understand that parents literally weren’t allowed to? Parents DID try. Parents DID organise those things. The problem is the seriousness of COVID was far too great and too widespread for a few online play dates to remedy. For fuck’s sake you might as well say kids dying during the London Blitz was parents not buying their kids hard hats to stop German bombs. The problem isn’t the parents, it’s the world they’re in.

Ok and? COVID just exacerbated those already-existing trends. Even your average game addict kid will occasionally go to a birthday party or something. With COVID no one could do that though. The whole point was that we were living through lockdowns and social distancing to stop the spread. Again, I’m not making this up. There are countless articles of the very real effects this has had. Again, just look them up. The evidence is obvious.

As a young kid? God all the time. I feel like pretty much every weekend I had some sort of park party, or swimming trip, or whatever else planned out for me. I mean isn’t that what most people urban people in the modern world do? When you have kids you take them out, go to lunch etc. That’s why parks, museums, libraries etc exist. People like to socialise and have activities, especially developing minds. Please tell me this isn’t an outlier, I feel like this was the norm for pretty much most modern people, right?

Yes because everyone - and especially young kids - are still traumatised by the impacts of the pandemic. Early childhood development is a delicate thing. If kids aren’t out there learning social skills, making mistakes, playing with other kids etc it stunts their development and makes engaging with the world harder. Just look it up, this is like well-documented human psychology (as well as just basic common sense.) Having kids miss out on these milestones creates psychological problems for these kids that, again, society has refused to address. The reason your average 8-16 year old these days is a shut-in phone addict is because for two years this was literally the only way they could survive. Plus considering how callous adults have been about COVID and recovery since the pandemic ended, it’s no wonder they’re not wanting to do anything other than play Minecraft all day.

I’m not going to get into the details about urban vs rural living, but even if you believe this, being able to go out to the park of the cinemas with your friends/family in a city is still much healthier for your average child than not being able to do that. I grew up in the city and I turned out fine, precisely because I was able to go to the zoo, the water park etc. If I had been a kid not being able to do that for years at a time it would’ve screwed with my mental development. I really feel for anyone under like 25 these days.

Yeah man toddlers being locked up in dense houses instead of being out at the park or on field trips certainly had no impact whatsoever right

Being free to run around the countryside in a pre-industrial society =/= being locked up in an urban appartment or home for 2+ years having digital screens as your only source of education/human interaction while a pandemic rages around you. This isn’t rocket science. fuck it I’ll make it painfully obvious for you. Did YOU go to school in some isolated rural hamlet?

What century are you talking about man? Are you from the 1800s? 💀 I literally just searched it up, here was the first article. It’s a real thing that happened. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/mar/18/how-covid-changed-children-britain edit: quote from the article: “Five years on the fallout continues. Uncertainty, increased inequality, accelerated screen use and crippling anxiety are just a few of the Covid legacies affecting children and young people. Covid babies are now five and struggling to meet basic developmental milestones; 1.6 million children in England are still persistently absent from school; and students whose university years were stolen by the pandemic are still struggling with low mental health“ WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT COVID.

It depends in which part of the world you are, but a lot of kids functionally spent 2+ years locked inside. Even if lockdowns only lasted like six months, most schools didnt really do full reopenings until like 2023. Not to mention even after schools reopened, a lot of kids / families simply checked out of school altogether cause of the psychological disruption and basically only showed up for lessons like one a month or something. I mean, I’m not making this up. Just search “kids education COVID disruption” or something on Google and you’ll find thousands of articles, all across the world. This is nothing to say of teenagers / young adults who missed a lot of traditional milestones (prom, graduation, moving out of home, getting a degree etc) because COVID fucked everything over.

See, this is more of what I’m talking about. Everyone had different experiences. Some people got through the pandemic rather easily; others got super frustrated and turned into like aggressive extroverts the day lockdowns ended. some people used it to grow skills, watch shows, etc, while others, idk, tried to beef with police who were telling them not to cough all over the restaurant they were at, lol. What about kids? Kids these days fucking suck at school, and that’s largely because they spend much of their most formative years learning through online zoom meets. We NEED to talk about it; it’s impacted everything but we remain silent.