A long-term graph of life satisfaction is typically U-shaped for any give individual, according to social psychologist Lara Aknin.
It starts high around the ages of 16 to 18, dips down through much of adulthood and ticks upward again as people progress into their 60s and 70s.
But what of those young lives interrupted by a global pandemic that has forced many from their jobs, sent them off campuses and into Zoom chats and cut them off from nights out to party with friends?
“What we found in the early days of the pandemic – at least looking at data almost exclusively from 2020 – the young end of that U shape had collapsed,” said Aknin, an associate professor at Simon Fraser University.
She is in the midst of finishing a report for the Lancet COVID-19 Commission’s mental health task force, examining the effects the pandemic has had on the mental well-being of people worldwide.
“You could imagine it being a pretty reasonable response,” Aknin said, referring to younger generations facing particularly precarious economic and social situations.
“These folks were often in some of the most vulnerable industries, losing jobs and not seeing any clear path out.”
While people are social creatures, Aknin said the pandemic has been particularly tough for younger people, who generally have larger social circles than older generations.
“For many intents and purposes, the pandemic kind of restricted our circle and pushed a lot of it online,” she said.
The pandemic also inflicted a “heavy toll on young workers” between the ages of 18 and 29, according to a 2020 global study from the International Labour Organization (ILO).
Among the 12,605 respondents employed prior to the pandemic, 17% subsequently stopped working altogether. That trend was felt most acutely among those working in services, sales and clerical support.
Working hours fell by an average of two hours a day and 42% reported a reduction in income.
“Despite the best efforts of schools and training institutions to provide continuity through online delivery, 65% of young people reported having learnt less since the pandemic began, 51% believe their education will be delayed and 9% feared their education would suffer and might even fail,” the ILO report stated.
But there are some signs of hope for the generation of young people who have found themselves disadvantaged.
“In the very beginning when the initial pandemic hit, a number of our entrepreneurs were scared and worried about whether their businesses would be able to weather the storm,” said Andrea Welling, the B.C. regional director for Futurpreneur Canada, a non-profit that offers financing and business resources to entrepreneurs between the ages of 18 and 39.
“Then quite quickly on what we noticed was a lot of our entrepreneurs were able to pivot and be resilient.”
Since then, Futurpreneur Canada’s B.C. chapter has seen a 29% surge in applications.
The number of young entrepreneurs hasn’t been decreasing in B.C., but increasing.
“What we noticed was rather unexpected,” Welling said. “As youth were facing changes to unemployment, underemployment and just a little bit more opportunity, I think, to decide to be their own boss, they turned to us.”
She said these young entrepreneurs have been especially adept at tapping into e-commerce for their new businesses.
And that resiliency might be manifest in mental health, too, with early data finding some “notable signs” of people bouncing back, according to Aknin.
The World Happiness Report 2021 from Gallup reveals life evaluations across countries remained mostly static between 2017 and 2020.
“While the youth or young adults were certainly some of the most hard-hit groups, large-scale data trends suggest – at least from what I saw in summer and late fall – the early hard impacts [of the pandemic] in many ways has lessened, and in some places it alleviated entirely,” Aknin said.
