Posted on 03/25/2022 7:39:47 AM PDT by george76
ANALYSIS: Students no longer know how to relate to one another face to face
College students are isolated.
A Harvard study from last year found 61 percent of young adults ages 18 to 25 feel “serious loneliness,” with 43 percent of these respondents reporting increases since the pandemic. The Healthy Minds Study, which surveyed students at 36 schools during fall 2020, also found 66 percent felt isolated from others.
Every month or so, I see a new post on my university Reddit board from a student, who has nowhere else to turn, asking how to make friends. The college subreddit is flooded with these too, with posts almost daily. The stories are depressingly similar:
“Ever since then and Covid, I’ve found it nearly impossible to forge any true friendships with anyone in my course. I tried societies, clubbing, drinking and the most I’ve gotten was small talk and an exchange of socials or numbers where our conversation would eventually lead to nowhere. I’d have lots of acquaintances but just not friends.” – u/illestheartbreaker
“Halfway through my freshman year everyone was kicked off campus and put online due to the pandemic. But I didn’t start having in-person classes again until the beginning of my junior year. Because of this, I feel like I really missed out on opportunities to make genuine friends.” – u/bustcos789
“Covid really changed how people interact with each other, especially because I live in one of the biggest cities in the US. I’m not anti covid restrictions. I believe the scientists, I’m vaxxed and boosted, and I want to do whatever gets this to end, but I do feel like commenting on how it’s affecting us socially is important and we need to work to repair it when all of this is eventually over.” – u/[deleted]
Students no longer know how to relate to one another face to face, a consequence due in part to COVID restrictions and in part to today’s polarized environment. Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Julie Jargon observes how students aren’t interacting.
“They lost the skill to have small talk,” one lecturer quoted in the article said.
It’s not limited to younger students. One non-traditional 43-year-old student said she simply attended class and left, not forming any relationships. She explains, “Everyone had their masks on and you didn’t know anyone’s comfort level.”
So, worried what our peers may think, we hide our faces and our thoughts. Habitual mask-wearing is just a physical reminder of an issue that has been quietly chipping away at the morale of students for years — a lack of deep relationships.
It’s no wonder. Real relationships require some level of openness. Openness becomes socially risky when campus culture is gripped by a progressive ideology that won’t tolerate dissent. As University of Virginia senior Emma Camp shared in a recent New York Times op-ed, self-censorship on college campuses is real.
The smallest misstep can ostracize you from your peers.
Ironically, the very isolation that COVID restrictions exacerbated makes us increasingly susceptible to the kind of social control that was necessary to maintain them. It makes us less likely to risk disagreeing.
CS Lewis, in “The Four Loves,” writes that authoritarian control becomes easier when men lack true friends:
“Men who have real Friends are less easy to manage or ‘get at’; harder for good Authorities to correct or for bad Authorities to corrupt. Hence if our masters, by force or by propaganda about ‘Togetherness’ or by unobtrusively making privacy and unplanned leisure impossible, ever succeed in producing a world where all are Companions and none are Friends, they will have removed certain dangers, and will also have taken from us what is almost our strongest safeguard against complete servitude.”
This aptly describes the situation students find themselves in; lots of talk about togetherness that is really a facade for conformity. You must agree—or become an outcast.
We’ll pretend to be brave and vocal, but only about approved causes. It’s why we latch onto every passing social movement and social media trend—from posting a black square on Instagram, to putting pronouns in bios, and yes, to wearing masks. Students are filling their need for fellowship with “solidarity” and political advocacy.
There is something disingenuous about claiming to care about one another while cutting off friends and family who think differently, lest we forget how many people banned each other from family gatherings and were willing to segregate peers from polite society because of a personal decision to decline a medical procedure.
We must relearn how to connect with each other. To listen and consider before responding. To value despite disagreements. It’s hard; it’s awkward; it’s uncomfortable—but someone needs to break through the first barrier.
You never know who might take their metaphorical mask off because you gave them the courage. Honesty is the only way out. Let’s start talking again. Heart to heart. Face to face.
So I take it that “swiping left or right” is not doing it for them?
Good.
They don’t know which bathroom to use either.
There’s a lot of young folks that are aware of the commie propaganda. I’ve met them and have seen them in the media. Let’s not give up hope people. We have to help them to have courage.
CS Lewis, in “The Four Loves,” writes that authoritarian control becomes easier when men lack true friends:
“A well regulated militia......................
the 2nd is not about guns.
Men,
Put a fridge in your garage, fill it with beer, light the fire and find the other warriors around you.
NOW!
BS. They talk to each other 24/7 on their cell phones when they’re not “hooked up” together. This is crazy.
Hint: This isn’t a pandemic issue. It was bound to happen. The ones that don’t feel lonely probably have terrible parents that made them do egregious things like making them go out side and play with friends instead of sitting on the couch texting each other in the same room.
.......according to recent articles I’ve read Harvard is now seen as near 100% PURE WOKE ............so any “study” with Harvard’s name on it should be used to line the bottom of parakeet pages not taken seriously.
Fauci knew that these masks were useless against the Coof. He stated so at the very beginning. Yet he changed his tune and pushed for mask mandates anyway. It was a matter of control.
I have a couple of teenage relatives who won’t remove their masks at any social gatherings. I find it very disturbing. Yet I’m more concerned about how the mask and isolation mandates have impacted the socialization skills among the children than the teenagers and young adults.
they were not good at small talk before- everyone texts.
This aptly describes the situation students find themselves in; lots of talk about togetherness that is really a facade for conformity. You must agree—or become an outcast.
Fauci March, 2020- masks do not work, they just make emotional people feel better… like sucking your thumb.
Fauci privately advised Obama staffers to NOT wear masks: as ‘Not Effective’. February 4th, 2020.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3964426/posts
Agree, let them suffer with their self imposed lifestyle. Their drug of choice is the daily propaganda feed coming from their cell phones. Swipe Left, Swipe Right. Other than that they have ZERO social skills or basic mechanical ability to even screw in a light bulb.
The funniest thing I saw a while ago was a Wokester on his cell phone looking up instructions on how to change a flat tire. Best part was when he asked his partner, “what does the jack look like and what are the lug nuts?”
CEOs from all major U.S. airlines send letter to Biden asking him to drop his dang mask mandate!
https://media.notthebee.com/articles/623c745c0c1e6623c745c0c1e7.jpg
Surely, the mask mandates were stupid and insulting - but to argue that they emotionally crippled a generation is hyperbole, if you ask me.
Most healthy-minded people, young or old, resented the masks, and ripped them off their faces the minute they left whatever building that required them.
Anyone who did not, and happily wore them in their cars, their homes or outside, was a moron - already an emotional cripple long before Covid ever came along.
Children from normal families, who played maskless outside with friends, and enjoyed their family time without the face diapers - these children had plenty of normal mask-free social interaction.
Frankly, the masks were an outrage - but there are far worse outrages being forced on school children and over-compliant citizens in shops and workplaces.
The real threat to our young people is Marxism - woke gender confusion, cooked-up racial division, America Last border and energy policies, globalist economic suicide, war mongering, stolen elections, wholly corrupted media and academia - to name just a few.
Feb. 24, 2022 — A union representing flight attendants called to extend an illegal rule requiring passengers to wear useless face masks ( that do not block a virus ) on planes.. Association of Flight Attendants.. because not all of the youngest passengers have been forced to take the experimental / vaxx / bio- weapon. Poison.
I have 4 kids—when the pandemic hit, they were 23, 21, 17, and 14. The older ones have jobs now but have never worked in an office, and long to. The two younger ones have been in “remote” school for a year each and then masked for an entire year after that. Their lives changed entirely.
Last week the now 16 and 19 year old have finally unmasked. It’s agonizing. Teens and young adults have been hit hard. They sacrificed a lot for those who are 85+.
Kids who were seniors for the last two years have missed having their Proms, Football games, Senior activities, graduation ceremonies I really feel for those kids in the senior classes of 2020, and 2021 what we did to these kids SUCKS!!
Proms, Football games, Senior activities, graduation ceremonies
***If Covid did anything worthwhile, it proved how useless these things are.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
