Many consider the late teens and early 20’s a crucial transformative phase in their lives. Often marked by instability at the best of times, most people find themselves under increasing educational and financial pressures. Many of this generation believe that the speed and breadth of the COVID-19 pandemic not only strangled their only way to make a living, but their voice as well. Young people are often those found protesting for a more sustainable future. However, with in-person meetings banned, education becoming remote, and unemployment skyrocketing, the “COVID generation” is struggling to find purpose and identity.

The pandemic has brought on universal struggles for everyone, the most obvious being social distancing and lockdowns. Children nowadays have a distinct lack of engagement with the outside world, often shielded both physically and mentally from the pandemic. Adults have faced career struggles including business losses and job cuts, with self-employed people being some of the most affected. However, the major difference between the pandemic experience for the COVID generation and others is the transitional nature of the experience. Those outside of the COVID generation have experienced a “normal” version of their lives before the pandemic struck, allowing them to understand their position in society much better. Older generations can identify with their role in society with an existing or previous career. Younger generations will grow up into a society much better adapted for a post-pandemic environment. In this sense, the COVID generation is the guinea pigs.

Starting university is an already difficult task becoming near impossible for some. As of now, there are three cohorts of university students that have not experienced a regular university life. Most of their lectures have been delivered through online platforms, students have been restricted to their dormitories or their homes, and social life has been stripped away. This is more the case for students studying away from their home country. Their best chance to learn about their new country’s culture, people, and language has been removed. Many new students have been left without support, unable to return home due to travel restrictions and the ever-changing policies on student visas. 

There is no doubt that this pandemic is a life-changing experience for everyone. For the COVID generation, identity and mental health awareness were already issues rearing their heads before the pandemic hit. Ever since the pandemic, these students have been left to their own thoughts about what their purpose is, who they actually are, and who they want to be. The silver lining is that this environment has allowed more people to self-reflect, but at what cost? The pandemic has stripped these students of the majority of their in-person connections, replacing them with a digitized version. 

It is arguably worse for the graduating cohort who are entering a job market already unfamiliar to them but made further unrecognizable by altered employment application systems and job descriptions, none of which they were prepared for during their “regular” education. The job market lacks the same support system that educational institutions have — there is no mulligan if they mess up an interview or forget to submit a part of their job application. This is all alongside the massive decline in demand for employees and interns in the current economic climate. With far fewer ways to further their careers, what are these graduates left with? Their only alternative is to go into graduate education, but even this requires financing unavailable to them, making their position more unstable. Those lucky enough to graduate into a field less affected by COVID are now competing with a more competitive field of graduates for those few remaining stable career pathways.

The pandemic in itself will be remembered as a transformative period in modern history for as long as humanity survives, due to its all-encompassing impact on human life. However, the collective memory of the COVID generation is less defined by recorded numbers in economic decline and death counts, but rather by our perception of the experience. We, as university students, young adults, and emerging teens, need to bounce back from this crisis. We need to be the generation that grew up in and prevailed through the COVID-19 pandemic.