To think young people have been totally forgotten ??

[Mossang3l]

I was watching something earlier and it was the very elderly talking about how the community has come together to take care of them. Christmas dinners, companionship, gifts, phone calls, check ins etc. Wonderful. I’m very happy they are being looked after.

But it’s really struck a chord with me. There is NOTHING like this to look after the young even though they are sacrificing so much for everyone else.

They don’t have careers or adult social connections, they’re probably single, they’re missing their educations and exams, they’re probably the highest percentage to have lost their jobs, they can’t see their friends, their future prospects have been reduced massively (through the economy, educational inequalities, brexit etc).

They’re all lonely and isolated and scared and all that adults seem to do is bitch about students and the young. They’re moaned about and criminalised just for being young (well they were is September anyway but it’s stuck I fear). Far too many of them are committing suicide and yet still nothing happens.

My daughter (20) lost her job and can’t get a new one, hasn’t been into uni once and is so lonely. She signed up to volunteer with every organisation she could find and hasn’t heard back from a single one.

Surely we need to be doing more to help the young ? I fear they are being totally forgotten and may be having the worst time of all.

@BackforGood that’s interesting - here in Australia uni has been completely online since April or so - pracs, tutorials, exams - the lot (not sure how that even works for my son’s very hands-on degree - physio). Schools have by and large been open throughout except for a couple of months at the start, but not unis. Some accommodation was still open, and some friends’ kids still went and had the experience you describe, but most kids chose to stay at home in my experience.

@SecretSpAD

Delaying the completion of your degree etc by a year is hardly worse than having spent a decade building up a business to watch it all crumble to dust, as has happened to so many people. Won’t be many 21yo remortgaging their houses etc.

Which is what has just happened to a friend of mine who was 45. After spending years as cabin crew she set up her own travel company two years ago. She had borrowed some money, had people investing and remortgaged her house. It was just starting to turn a profit when covid struck.

In the last 9 months she lost everything (and yes we all supported her but it was too much to recoup). Her house was repossessed last month and she spent the last month of her life living in a mutual friends air bnb.
As she was single and childless she wasn't eligible even for emergency accommodation where she lived.
Her partner lives in Germany and she hadn't been able to see him since last March.
Her parents had died years ago and apart from her friends she was alone in the world.

You might notice the past tense. That's because she killed herself on Christmas Day because she knew, at 45 and only ever knowing the travel industry, she couldn't even get a job at Asda (yes she tried). She had had to wait weeks for UC and slipped through the net with govt support. She died owing £500K.

My 18 year old and 14 year old still have their futures. My friend, her partner, doesn't.

I understand this completely. I'm in my 30's, single and childless. I lost my job in May, universal credit is just under £500 a month. After my divorce I spent 4 years building up my career, developing a good social circle and reconnecting with my family. I felt like it was taken away overnight. I'm drowning in debt, I can see me losing my flat. If I default it affects my work prospects as I'm in financial services. My family are in a different (UK) country so subject to different lockdown rules. I literally didn't speak to anyone for months. When cases started rising in October and talk of a new lockdown started I took an overdose. Unlike your friend, I pulled through. Not entirely sure if I'm glad about that yet.

I'm sorry @ColdemortReturns, I hope you have some real life support that you can talk to

I need a 'like' or 'well said' button for PattyPan and TheSunIsStillShining 's posts.

@SecretSpAD and @ColdemortReturns really sorry to read these accounts, people have just been stretched to beyond comprehension. You made a valid point Coldemort about everything you've built up and worked towards being taken away, it's been similar for me as last year was the first time in a long time that I started feeling so self confident, I was losing weight, had built up a good circle of friends and was living with really good friends. Then as the year struck I fell out with some old friends and was cruelly dumped, then March with the lockdown kicked in and it seemed to get worse from then. A year later and I'm now back at home when I've spent years promising myself once I moved out I wouldn't be back and had worked so hard at achieving that. Put that with not being able to get a job (especially when the local stores here are putting banners up saying they're recruiting x-amount of new colleagues) and it's not that great for your self esteem. I can't even go and visit my sister until the 19th January at the earliest, and she has developed severe health anxiety from covid and is now on antidepressants but she copes day by day and I can't even be there for her. I know that she wouldn't do anything but it never lets that niggling feeling go away.

Completely agree with you @Mossang3l

@BackforGood Thank you :)

@SecretSpAD and @ColdemortReturns I am so sorry to hear both your stories. flowers

Coldemort That is why we need to hear from people like you. There are too many cases like that and I would prefer to remove the mandatory measures even if we double covid deaths as a result.

I get why posters are saying we should vaccinate teachers and the young first. It would benefit our family, as we have school-aged DDs (11 and 8) who I really don’t want to have their schools closed. Lockdown in the spring was miserable for them.

But it’s clear that the NHS is at breaking point right now. Vaccinating the elderly and vulnerable is the only way to take the pressure off.

@ColdemortReturns

I’m so sorry to hear about your friend, that’s so horribly tragic.

We are in Leicestershire. Subject to the tightest restrictions since the end of March (except that now we are T3 not T4). No mixing indoors the entire time. The only thing my 14 year old DS is allowed to do is go to school, Even that isn't like normal (understandably).

He's too old to want to do much with his parents (again understandably). Too young to be able to do much independently like older teens might.

He's made the best of it but has been restricted for so long that the cracks are starting to show.

It's been very hard for young people IMO, in different ways for different ages but I think especially so for teens developing their independence, older teens with so many options to mix removed, and young adults who have left home and are trying to find their feet.

I'm not sure of the answer. For my DS a different type of a school lesson might help- maybe something giving some pastoral type care, or some enjoyable activities. I appreciate though that school is primarily for learning!

There are MANY young singles who are completely alone too

I'm 27 and all of my single, and most of my coupled up, friends have just ignored any restrictions tbh.. mixing households, meeting up in groups in tier 4, tinder, visiting family and having friends round at xmas.

They seem to have the attitude of "well we are young and our families are okay with it so whatever".

Honestly unless you are living on your own you cannot cry about the lack of social interaction.

Sorry but those living on their own have had it hardest, they don't have someone to hug, talk to etc. Any social interaction is mostly video calls or phone call conversations which really isn't the same as having someone actually there.

At the very least more young people as in under 18's are living at home and have their parents there for hugs, cuddles, conversation, play games together etc.

I know a few people living on their own in tier 4, they can't travel to meet up with friends either so their only face to face conversation is at the supermarket or the delivery person..

Totally 100% agree with you. My student DD and her boyfriend just broke up, so hard to sustain a relationship when literally all you can do is go for a walk together. My younger DD at least has the outlet of horse riding which is outside and healthy while still being sociable but I agree that for young people in general it's awful, and I do fear for their mental health if this continues much longer.

Those living on their own, and single, with no close family and following the regulations, are unlikely to have touched, or been touched by another human being since March. That is really really doing it hard.

No, I don't think you're being reasonable.

It's difficult for everybody. At least younger people (and I work at a university, so I'm familiar with them) are in one of the groups least likely to die or be seriously infected, and they will have time to catch up once this thing is finally as over as it's ever going to get.

Much older people, though - particularly those in nursing homes - have spent almost a year unable to see their relatives at all, many of them suffering from dementia and unable to understand what's going on and why (as they must feel) their relatives have deserted them.

Then there are the older people like my aunt who broke her shoulder just before lockdown and has had to spend the last 9 months virtually confined to a chair, unable to make the recovery that she'd otherwise have made, so that she's now suffering from dementia and clearly advancing fairly rapidly towards death.

So, again - it's difficult for everybody, but I certainly don't feel that the younger end of the age spectrum have had the worst of this, or that they'll come out worst in the end.

Not that it should be viewed as a competition, btw.

I don't know why so many people persist in answering the thread as if it says "AIBU to think the young are worse off than anyone else".

From the OP:
I fear they are being totally forgotten and may be having the worst time of all

I remember Red Nose days with VTs about the loneliness of living alone with no social contact. It was considered so terrible we/I contributed to charity to help. Now you should channel WW2 and get on with it.

You dont have to be elderly to be lonely. I would also put my hard hat on and say the elderly arent also dealing with loneliness, plus financial debt, plus worries about losing their home, plus being (I'm now classed long term 6+months) unemployed, plus my sector may never recover, plus no dating or possibility of such.

Plus to be frank state pension is double universal credit.

It's not a competition to the bottom, but I would swap my situation to an 18 year olds in a heartbeat.

My 21 year old is house sharing with 4 other girls. 3 of them have lost their jobs. Their uni course seems to have fizzled and yet they are paying through the roof for it.

My 15 year old has lost her spark. She's changed from being quite studious and fun loving to hating school and binging Netflix.

This seems to have no end in sight 😥

@ItsIgginningtolookalotlikeXmas

From the OP: I fear they are being totally forgotten and may be having the worst time of all

‘May be having the worst time of all’ may have been a slightly misguided 8 words, but it’s not a definite statement and it’s very clear it’s not the point of the thread