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.

@HazeyJaneII - totally agree - it is an abhorrent idea. I thought civilised societies took care of their elderly and vulnerable - apparently not (well not according to this thread). I have an eighteen year old - who didn't get an 18th party, didn't finish his A levels, had to cancel his travel plans this summer. What did he do? He decided to defer University and get a job (just like the majority of his friends). He doesn't like the restrictions but he gets on with it (as do the majority of young people) and he will come out of the other side - like the majority of young people .

@EstuaryBird I love your post!

This breaks my heart. There are young people who have no hope. My 25 year old has not been out the house since March, apart from 1 hour exercise. He's lost his job, his career, his industry, his hobby, and his friends who because of university do not live local enough to now see.

Applied for more than 300 jobs, one reply, a refusal and this includes seasonal jobs such as Royal Mail, and Amazon, plus supermarkets.

This generation has university loan debt, not much hope of getting on the property ladder and now the rug's been taken from their feet. It seems to me that they've been sacrificed for the 90 + age group, who may not even go out but are receiving a jab. So unfair.

@Flyonawalk

Agree 100% with the OP. Children, teens and young twenties have had their life chances curtailed.

I was interested to read in yesterday’s Times that Neil Ferguson (Professor Lockdown) admits that he was influenced by the virus response in China. He says that it was assumed in the U.K. that the public wouldn’t accept destruction of personal freedom. Then Italy locked down and SAGE decided the British public would go along with the same treatment.

And broadly people have accepted it. The young will suffer the effects for longest and I find this appalling.

I totally agree and its so unfair :(

Tbf most parents of teenagers at the minute just say they can't stop them breaking the rules. Where we live they definitely get together a lot. I saw a couple practically shagging outside a childrens play area at about 2 in the afternoon (t'was grim, but young love / lust and all that) before the christmas holidays. So, I think, at least some young people and teenagers are indeed saying fuck the rules! I sort of can't blame them, but at the same time, if they live with a sibling or parent who is more vulnerable, I might not feel all that great about them breaking the rules if I was that vulnerable parent or had another child who was vulnerable.

No idea what to suggest about any of this btw. Covid has definitely stolen chunks of people's lives and it sucks whichever part of that spectrum you are on. Babies and young dcs not having any support or contact with wider family or communities, children missing school, socialising and exercise (when they have to isolate), exam year kids missing parts of their education, etc etc. At the other end, older people who may not be long for this world regardless, having to spend large chunks of their remaining time on earth indoors seeing nobody. It's all shit.

Also agree that teachers and lecturers have gone above and beyond to try to help young people. I think we should be grateful about that too.

Every age group has its own issues and challenges.

Its not just the young adults etc. Who feel likenthey have lost a yr of their life pretty much everyone can say the same thing.

Career and job prospects havent just been curtailed for them it affects many people and varying ages. Those older workers who may have been made redundant how much harder it'll be for then to find another job (age discrimination still exists).

If you still have a job itll also take longer to move up as number of jobs decline.

Its hard on lots of people and noone is being left out or being forgotten about.

If anyone had a right to gripe it was back in March in the first lockdown when those living alone were truly forgotten about. That has since been addressed.

End of the day its ayr and at most 2yrs its temporary and yes a small set back but that's life. Not everything goes smoothly.

It's shit for everyone really apart from Jeff Bezos and some billionaires. None of us are going to have the life we might have done had this not happened.

@EstuaryBird wow, good for you! Great post 👏

@DOINGOURBIT best wishes to your son. That sounds so tough for him.

I agree OP, it’s an absolute disgrace. I gave teenagers and I’ve watched everything turn to shit for them, it’s left me feeling angry and helpless.

Estuarybird totally agree. I have a very nearly 14yo and it really is all that life stuff that she's missing out on. Yes, she can kind of do education to a certain degree but it's the socialisation and learning how to safely make mistakes and learn life lessons that are being lost.

I agree that the prioritisation of the vaccine seems to be a bit upside down. The 80+ yo can continue to isolate for longer without detrimental impact to the economy. Health care workers should have been the very first, and then other key workers. By their very nature, they are the ones keeping society running.

It's not a competition as to who has it shittest.

@Pearsapiece thing is no one here is saying that your experience isn't shit, and I'm sorry it's left you feeling suicidal and unsupported. But the lack of support, the situation - kids, poor MH - that isn't because of your age. That's the point
It isn't shit because you're in your 20s. It would be shit if you were doing the same thing in your 30s or 40s bad the support or lack there of would be the same.

Exactly @Plussizejumpsuit. Every aspect of life has been affected by this. Every single one. There are a few people whose money and societal advantage insulates them from devastating global events, but everyone else has been hit.

Even people who are on the next rung down from the billionaires will have taken some kind of hit. It won't floor them, but it's there. I don't know anyone - from age 90 to 6 months, from self employed to management level to retired to minimum wage, from home owner to shared accommodation tenant, from parent to single, from healthy to dealing with pre existing illness - who's having a good time right now, or living their best life, or even just enjoying little normal pleasures. It is horrible.

But if someone had asked me, two years previous, what I thought living through a pandemic would be like, I would have said that it would probably be shit, scary and difficult. Which is what this is.

Op how can you post They’re all lonely and isolated and scared ? Of course they are not all those things! Though I do accept many will be.
In your 20s you have so many years ahead. I feel for those in their late 30s who had hoped to meet someone to have a baby with in the past year or so.. There is going to be a sacrifice at any age or stage of life.
Younger teenagers - we have put a lot in place to keep them in school so if that has all been pointless that's a bit of a blow.

I also worry about the time missed in education. Presumably, medical schools require a certain grade in eg chemistry, because that standard is necessary to succeed in the course. So last years y13s, who lost the last few months of their a levels and were awarded questionable grades - are they actually at the right standard for the courses they progress to?

@modgepodge I’ve wondered about this too - even pre-pandemic we had a situation where many university academics complained that much of the first year was wasted on remedial teaching, making up for gaps in basic study skills etc. Will we end up with a generation of sub-standard young professionals who simply ‘know less stuff’? Just can’t see how all of the lost learning can be made up.

No one is sacrificing the very elderly. They are getting the vaccine. It will take months and months before a 40 year will be vaccinated. Yet that 40 year old might be a bus driver, a social worker, a shop assistant, policeman, teacher, child care assistant, homeless officer. They are being sacrificed everyday by going out to work.

I didn't say Cbeebies is enough. I know it's shit. I had a 15 month old at the start of this pandemic. I lost my job. Nursery closed.
What I am saying is that there was some acknowledgement by society that this situation is shit for mothers. There are 25 mums per session twice a week here benefiting from toddler music class and I am in a small market town, not a city and nowhere near bloody London. The government allow bubbles of any household size for under ones. They exempted children from gathering figures in Wales and Scotland after lockdown 1 so 2 mums and 2 babies could meet up. What has there been for young adults who are living with family they don't get on with? Nothing. I think that when the figures were low in summer that those say 16-25 living with family should have been able to choose a friend or boy/girl friend to legally see. We threw a load back into sixth form and uni anyway.

I’m 25 and I don’t think young people deserve blanket pity. Firstly young people are still much better off than older people, because we already know how to use technology and we’re unlikely to die. Secondly there’s a big difference between people still in education (under 18s and students) and other young adults. I do feel sorry for people who’ve lost out on the university experience as a result of the pandemic.
Personally I have done very well out of the pandemic. I see my friends more regularly over zoom than I would have done in person. I’m going to night school online which means I can rewatch the lectures at my leisure for revision. I don’t have to do a 3 hour round trip commute every day any more, saving me over £5000 a year. Literally the only way in which I’ve been negatively impacted by the pandemic is not seeing my parents at Christmas. This isn’t an unusual position amongst my friends either - four of my friends have bought houses this year, three singly and one with her partner. No one I know has lost their job. My (full time student) 21yo SIL has pretty much been going about as normal to be honest so she hasn’t suffered either!

I think the idea of allowing teens a nominated friend as a support bubble is a great idea. Our children are at school every day with a load of kids but they can't go round to a friend's/boyfriend's/girlfriend's house to socialise in the evening or at weekends. I know it's probably hard to police or there is the worry people will take the piss and have more than one over or whatever but frankly I'm fed up of pandering to the lowest common denominator all the time and assuming the worst of people. Most of the young people I know have been following the rules.

Actually the poster saying they were shafted during the recession has hit a sore point for me.

I'm old enough that I've been to university before the extra fees really ramped up, first in my family. I work in an established technical field (specialist engineering role which is difficult to physically outsource or hire cheaper in).

However, I look at my colleagues just 5, 6 or 7 years behind me in experience.. the ones graduating in 2008, 2009 and beyond...

In this stable, high need career, I've been able to get my own home, marry, have a child.

They are mostly stuck at parents, or in flatshares or in one case a "shared ownership" home... No kids. Marriage is a far away plan. No bumper pay raises for even the exceptional ones (I should know, I have 1 female engineer in my team who is being paid 25k but being given the work of someone at my level, and should be paid double to even barely reflect her competence and workload, but it's not gonna happen and she'll leave and we'll wring our hands about "lack of female talent" a bit harder next year). The only ones in that group already come from money, you can tell by the mention of skiing holidays and talk of a stable middle class family foundation.

My point is: with my aptitude, and strong work ethic, if I'd been born just 10 years later, I'd be as fucked as most of them are, reward wise. And yet these early 20s-early 30s colleagues are going to be paying the price - literally - through taxes for the rest of their post covid working lives.

If that isn't being fucked from two different angles I don't know what is. Fighting to establish yourself in these conditions looks increasingly impossible!

Thanks @Flyonawalk. It breaks my heart to see a young man with two degrees sitting in a 6ft by 9ft room day after day, applying to countless jobs with no response. His entire industry (events) has come to a standstill with no hope of resuming . He has no experience for anything else, and doesn't know where to start again. Totally demoralising. Can't see 2021 being a lot better, but we just have to count blessings in that he won't be battling public transport in rush hour and he still has his health.

It's a year, maybe 2.

You cannot say 'the young' have it the worst then claim that's everyone from toddlers to 30 year olds!!

It's just 'different' for each age group & for different people within that group.

We are nearly ALL missing out on things. We are nearly ALL having our lives re-routed.

If you're determined to say x group has it worse, then you are determined to ignore other people's struggles. It's a year or two if EVERYONES lives. Very few people had a better year than otherwise would have & the vast majority will have had their future changed.

I am in my twenties and do feel utterly forgotten.

Paying 9k for online uni when in previous years we've categorically been told that attendance is incredibly important and that those who only watch lectures back online don't do aswell. Not to mention these lectures aren't live, they're pre-recorded so no opportunity to ask questions or actually engage with the academic. Once a month we get one hour of 'question time' with the lecturer but half the time by then your question in the moment has slipped your mind and 1 hour a month isn't enough time to actually engage with all the content we're meant to have had in the lectures over the month.

Locked into student rental contracts, then told by the government were not to return to these, with absolutely no rent relief given for already overpriced properties that were then banned from living in. And any student that has chosen to go to their student house because there's no work space at home or their relationship with their family isn't fantastic is vilified by the locals and called a murderer (a case in Nottingham of locals throwing fireworks at a student house, among other more low level neighbourly disputes).

Uni is an age where many people meet their long term partners, yet we've been banned from seeing them inside for months (there's only so many socially distanced walk dates you can do and actually maintain a loving adult relationship)

Absolutely no career prospects. Grad jobs have been slashed.

All the jobs we do part time around uni have been shut down (restaurant, bar, retail ect). Plus the majority of us are on zero hours, minimum wage, contracts and rely on working extra over Xmas to pay for the next term so furlough doesn't even begin to cover expenses. 80% of minimum wage is very difficult to live on. Plus no tips.

These should be the best years of my life but instead I feel totally hopeless and on top of that I feel the need to defend myself continually as young people are constantly blamed for being feckless and the spike being our fault.

My life honestly feels pointless at this point and I can't see it getting any better in any future close enough to feel tangible. The world isn't my oyster at all, it's very bleak. Even after the pandemic is over my economic, career and future prospects feel bleak. In my early 20's a year is a massive portion of my memorable life. In the first lockdown I complied and happily got on with it thinking it was needed and to just plod on but now I really don't feel like I can do another 3/4 months of this. And I honestly don't feel ready to deal with the devastation this is going to leave in its wake either.

I agree 100% with @Arewethereyet21

The young and teachers need to be vaccinated. First.