It’s a known fact that mental health among pubescent kids has been suffering lately, especially with the advent of social media. Now, the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak have significantly impacted mental health and academic performance amongst students, positively and negatively. For starters, we can address remote learning. Is sitting in a room all day doing piles of assignments over a computer good for a student’s mental health and academic performance? On the other hand, in-person students are stuck roaming school with new safety procedures such as one-way hallways, masks, lunch set-ups. How does it add up?

Horizon Honors and many other Arizona schools pride themselves on graduation levels and their A+ ratings, but what they don’t often consider is their students’ mental health. As of right now, stress levels have obviously increased with the amount of work students have been receiving, along with dealing with a pandemic. More than half the people I know have clearly stated that in-person learning is better for academic performance, and here’s why.

Being able to sit at your laptop all day, with the opportunity to attend school without even leaving bed? That sounds great, doesn’t it? Well, maybe not. A large majority of students have chosen to attend in-person school after half a quarter of remote learning. Sure, it’s easier to attend school from your bedroom, but motivation levels have decreased a lot. Some students have received extremely low grades, even kids who were able to maintain B’s and A’s prior to remote learning. Well, the reason for this downgrade in academic performance is because of both teachers and students as well as COVID. Students seem to see school as more optional when they don’t have physical homework in hand. Additionally, teachers constantly talk about how it’s a hard and stressful time, yet continue to assign loads of work and are less lenient about grades than ever.

So, the obvious solution to this is attending in-person school. Well, mostly. Humans thrive on routine, and that was all destroyed after the outbreak. Most students have attempted to get back into their groove by attending school in-person again. The benefits of this definitely outweigh the benefits of remote learning. Now, students are able to receive work on actual paper and can ignore technological difficulties and distractions. But, of course, there are also negative effects. Now, schools require face masks, new pick-up and drop-off routes, hallway routines, and several new procedures that can be annoying to remember. 

Covid-19 has affected everyone. Fortunately, students are starting to get back into their routines, as are parents and teachers. With this new way of attending school, only time can tell how it affects the mental health of today’s youth.