We would like to know how young people living in Poland experience the pandemic and the changes it brought to the everyday life. Are they afraid of the disease? What do they think about the decisions of the government? How do they evaluate the online education? What is their experience of the first lockdown -how did it influence their family, social and love life? Do they see differences between the first and the second wave of online education? What do find to be the most frustrating, exhausting, funny, or encouraging?
In August 2020 we conducted first interviews with teenagers and young adults. Most of our interviewees live in Warsaw, but we also managed to talk to people from other cities. The younger person we spoke to was 14 years-old, and the oldest was 20. The interviewees belonged to different social groups and went to different types of schools (big and small, public and private, very well known and and not known at all). Half of the people we spoke to lived with both parents, the other half – with one of the parents.
The project is ongoing, and it is too early to draw conclusions. At this stage, we can only point out some issues that we found particularly interesting. For the young people we talked to the lockdown was much less difficult that we had expected. Some of our interlocutors said they had time to concentrate on their studies, some – that they were in intense contact with friends via the new technologies and they didn’t feel very lonely. Most of the people we spoke to were very critical of the online education (we also heard about the “disappearing teachers” who never came to an online class). We also spoke to young people who said that one of the most difficult experience of the lockdown ws inability to continue activist or voluntary work.