The emotional impact of the pandemic on young people: Sociability, conflict, and politics

Abstract

Studies have shown that the Covid-19 pandemic has had various effects on society that go beyond physical health. As a team, we have found in our research that young people are among those groups whose mental health and subjective well-being have been most affected by the pandemic. In this article we explore possible explanations for this greater impact, relying on the sociology of emotions and the results of a survey applied in Chile to a sample of 2,552 people, of whom 629 are young people aged between 18 and 29 years. Using bivariate statistics and latent class analysis, we find that young people who have experienced greater emotional distress during the pandemic do not present marked socioeconomic differences to other youth groups. However, they do report a poorer perception of their general health, a higher level of conflict in their home, a much more negative online education experience, and a poorer evaluation of both the government’s management of healthcare and society’s response to the pandemic. We discuss these results in light of the characteristics of today’s youth and the sociology of emotions.