By: Chloe Ho, Staff Writer
For many people, it’s a relief to be back in person for school. Distance learning has taken a heavy toll on the majority of youth in terms of overall well-being and academic performance, and returning to a normal environment gives everyone an opportunity to start fresh and make up for the previous year. An in-person school experience is essential for everyone. Seeing friends, obviously, is superb. But in the larger picture, the social effects it has (which friends fall under) is extremely important because they affect all aspects of one’s health. Given that students had been cooped up at home for most of the school year, these significant differences and advantages compared to distance learning may be more noticeable in terms of feeling, but what they actually are may not be immediately apparent. With that said, this article aims to display exactly what a school environment provides for students that distance learning may not, and underline why what it provides is so important.
It can be heavily agreed upon that distance learning was unorganized, ineffective, and just generally irritating. A year of screen fatigue, achy joints from sitting, diminished motivation, and the divide between teachers and students are problems students are all too familiar with. Additionally, mental health issue rates have increased at an alarming rate. According to JAMA Pediatrics, “Across 29 samples and 80, 879 youth, the pooled prevalence of clinically elevated depression and anxiety symptoms was 25.2% and 20.5%… Thus globally, 1 in 4 youth are experiencing clinically elevated depression symptoms, while 1 in 5 youth are experiencing clinically elevated anxiety symptoms. A comparison of these findings to pre-pandemic estimates (12.9% for depression and 11.6% for anxiety) suggests that youth mental health difficulties during the COVID-19 pandemic has likely doubled.” One of the main problems that have contributed to this issue is the lack of social interaction. Social interaction is something that all humans naturally crave, and being separated from those you enjoy communicating with and being restricted to digital communication just cannot satisfy. Though students are surrounded by those in their household, there is nothing that can replace talking with friends, especially when one is living in a world of uncertainty and experiencing troubles in academics and well-being.
On a more psychological level, social relationships are crucial to everyday life. In the words of NCBI, “Social support may have indirect effects on health through enhanced mental health, by reducing the impact of stress, or by fostering a sense of meaning and purpose in life… Supportive social ties may trigger physiological sequelae… that are beneficial to health and minimize unpleasant arousal that instigates risky behavior… Personal control refers to individuals’ beliefs that they can control their life outcomes through their own actions. Social ties may enhance personal control (perhaps through social support), and, in turn, personal control is advantageous for health habits, mental health, and physical health.” This is all regarding in-person interactions — digital communication cannot fulfill any of these. This also applies to online school, where students are too unengaged to pay attention, and teachers are limited in what they can do for them. They cannot keep them in check or disciplined, and so as motivation takes a dive, so does performance, followed by a spike in stress. This vicious cycle may have been prevalent among students before, but with the pandemic, this became a more common problem.
However, the past is not worth ruminating on for too long. Now that those days are gone, students can now shift back to a normal routine. But why is being in person so much better anyway? Obviously, being able to see friends and peers is great, but the school environment as a whole is actually crucial to all aspects of health because of its social factor. To touch back on seeing friends and peers, interaction with students actually provides a lot of benefits in pretty much every aspect of health.
One of the most notable ones is mental health. Explore Life agrees with this, explaining that “Social contact helps us to cope with stress and major life changes like a divorce, redundancy and moving house. And knowing that we are valued by others is an important psychological factor in helping us to forget the negative aspects of our lives, and thinking more positively about our environment.” There is a certain place in everyone’s lives that only those close to us, be it a friend, lover, or parent, can fill. A particular person or group may have even entered the mind as that was read. But in order to have made these relationships in the first place, one must’ve first conformed to their environment in order to be socially successful. To quote the NCBI again, “[The] Social Development Model hypothesizes that children learn patterns of behaviour from their social environments, and that this learning occurs in 4 ways: their perceptions of opportunities for being involved with others; their ability to interact with others; their actual involvement; and, the rewards they perceive as emanating from such involvement.” The article continues to elaborate on why these aspects are important, which can be summarized as contributing to a feeling of belonging. When these four behavioral patterns are in place, the student feels more need to uphold them, thus allowing them to naturally let themselves become comfortable in their environment.
These patterns are also evident in everyday life, and by exercising these at school, one is learning to become more socially intelligent in any social situation. Now that everyone has returned to in-person school, everyone is given opportunities to do some much needed and craved community building. Actually, students have been developing these skills since they were first ever in school through peer relationships. To add on, “Social interaction with another child who is similar in age, skills, and knowledge provokes the development of many social skills that are valuable for the rest of life… For example, as infants, children get their first encounter with sharing… during pretend play as preschoolers they create narratives together, choose roles, and collaborate… and in primary school, they may join a sports team, learning to work together and support each other emotionally and strategically toward a common goal. Through these experiences, children develop friendships that provide additional sources of security and support.” So not only are these interactions important for the sake of developing social relationships, they are crucial in developing personality traits and a set of skills that will be needed to go through life and social situations in the upcoming years. Of course, being in social situations also proposes challenges — self-esteem issues, for example, are common among many because of the desire to be accepted and to please others. But, as addressed earlier, healthier bonds you have with others help to counter such difficulties. In addition, these difficulties themselves also allow one to build some character development.
Of course, it’s definitely worth addressing additional benefits brought by being in the company of people. There are physical health benefits, for one. Returning to Explore Life, “There is compelling evidence to suggest human contact is also vital for our physical health too…. Sociology researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, cited evidence linking [little relations between] social ties with a host of conditions, including the development and worsening of cardiovascular disease, repeat heart attacks, autoimmune disorders, high blood pressure, cancer and slowed wound healing.” There are also more academically centered benefits, which should naturally come from being in the comforting presence of students in an academic setting. The Education Hub states that a student with weak social connections has a higher chance of struggling with organization, time management, attention, and transfer of knowledge among others. This relates to what was previously addressed regarding comfort in an environment — if one is uncomfortable, the level of success in other aspects decreases, which is why it’s important to get out there and form some relationships with others.
Though that was a lot, all of it ties back into being in person. Being able to be in school, as painful as it might be (especially after coming back from being at home for such a long time), is so important for our health. Distance learning damaged that by restricting all socializing to chat and occasionally laggy cameras and audio. And, to be honest, no one was really particularly engaged as a result of that because there was no environment surrounding them to encourage that. Eventually, the student body will have completely readapted to the school environment and begin to maybe even take it for granted. It’s worth remembering, however, the days of distance learning. The days where it was nearly impossible to succeed academically because all aspects of health were being halted from growing and hurt. With the return of students comes the return of opportunities, and because they were so scarce during last year, it’s encouraged that all students take advantage of opportunities not only in academics, but with expanding their social circle. Making an acquaintance never hurts, and networking is always worth a try. It should be in the interests of everyone to make this year better than the last, and it can all begin with just taking the risk of socializing.
