Items

• 
  2020

  How the Internet Saved My Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic

  Prior to the first major COVID-19 breakout in the US, I was already doing online school. I had some health problems that led me to take my senior year of high school online; this was already a little hard, as my school had many senior year traditions that I, unfortunately, missed out on, so my general motivation was already pretty low. The main thing that really helped was being able to hang out with friends in person and talk to people using social media. I remember very vividly when COVID-19 first hit. It was sometime in March; I remember it so vividly due to a joke that my friends and I made. Senior skip day happened right when the news about the virus started to spread everywhere - my friends and I started joking about whether or not they skipped the last day of high school they would ever attend. This joke eventually came to fruition; first, it was a two-week "vacation." Then it was a month. Eventually, the rest of the year was called off, and my friends joined me in the ventures of online schooling. The beginning of quarantine was relatively easy from a mental health standpoint. We were too busy being excited over the "vacation" we were given, and all the time we had to play video games with each other. This excitement soon began to fade, however, mainly when the weather began to get warm again (I live in Massachusetts) and the seasons started to change. The feeling of being trapped inside during the only time of year truly worth being outside for is pretty suffocating. It is no surprise that my mental health started to suffer, mainly in the form of motivation issues and increased anxiety, and depression that was normally seasonal began to manifest itself in the only season it usually didn't. If not for the internet connecting my friends and me, I would have had a much harder time throughout quarantine in general. Despite my mental health being worse than usual, it was not nearly as bad as it could have been given the circumstances. The horrible statistics and lack of hope for a vaccine that clouded my thoughts when not distracted disappeared while I was in my own world talking to friends through a computer screen - escapism was my main source of comfort, and I have the internet and my friends to thank for that. Eventually, the feeling of hopelessness went away. Vaccines started to be distributed, and life returned to (slightly) normal. We got used to wearing masks in public, and avoiding crowded areas, but this was a small price to pay considering how bad it was before.