Lockdown has tired teenagers – Kommersant FM

Teenagers have accumulated digital fatigue and lost face-to-face communication skills. It’s all because of the lockdown during the pandemic. This conclusion was reached by analysts from the Presidential Academy of RANEPA, who studied involvement in online communications. It turned out that young people aged 12-20, who during the coronavirus pandemic were forced to switch to distance learning and communication for a long time, tend to communicate more offline after restrictions are lifted.

At the same time, changes in their socialization are visible; some schoolchildren find it easier to look for friends not in the classroom, but on social networks. And in children’s groups there is more bullying. Sociologists associate this with a habit from the virtual world, which allows aggressive actions, instantaneously and anonymously.

In just a few years, when such teenagers enter the labor market, it will be quite difficult for them to work for hire or build their own company, believes Dmitry Kovalenko, head of the center for work with universities at Sber University: “It is very important that a person, moving to the next stage of education, for example , upon entering the university, joins a new team, and each time this is the formation of oneself in a team, the opportunity to develop teamwork skills, skills of empathy and self-management.

If the guys were faced with a forced digital environment for a long time precisely during the period when they changed schools, entered the university, then, of course, it will be more difficult for them, they were not able to gain the valuable experience that their peers received when moving to a new team . And when they become managers, build a career or launch their own startup, they may have difficulties.”

The list of gaps that future young professionals may have includes a lack of skill in resolving conflicts with opponents, as well as a desire to avoid collective work in principle. Experts are already preparing special adaptation programs for “victims” of lockdowns and the digital environment, says Tatyana Dolyakova, general director of the ProPersonnel recruitment agency: “Probably the most active time, when the desire to work and search for a professional purpose is formed, is 17-18 years old, at 20 years old young specialists go to work, to practice, and they have lost this moment a little.

Young people are frustrated, firstly, they don’t understand where to go to work now, since usually employers either work with young people, attract them to them, or the young people themselves, after the third year, go on some kind of internship. And this moment was lost, so young people are not focused or do not even understand how to look for work, they lack communication skills and experience.

And secondly, they lack the desire to actually work full-time because they were used to being at home for two years and saw an opportunity to not be in the office. Now even for HR there are separate programs for working with youth; HR’s task is to get young people out through games, some kind of competitions and gamification.”

But there are also positive aspects to the involvement of teenagers in the digital environment, RANEPA researchers note. This is the expansion of social contacts and the associated benefits.

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Svetlana Belova