Michigan 'COVID cohort' enters adulthood with emotional scars, 'unprecedented' help

Time stopped for Helena Cole in March 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic confined the high school freshman to her bedroom most of the time.

Upon graduation, “suddenly, like, I’m basically an adult,” the soft-spoken now-19-year-old from Mattawan says, “and I have no idea what I’m doing.”

Cole is among what some refer to as the “COVID Cohort,” the nearly 15 million U.S. students whose formative high school years were rocked by the pandemic. Staring at screens when they most needed the refining fire of in-person interactions, these now late teens to early-20-somethings missed crucial steppingstones to adulthood.

And it shows, many say.

Pandemic restrictions, social isolation and missed opportunities for support in planning their futures, layered on top of the economic precariousness and social turmoil of recent years, left many in the COVID Cohort more emotionally uncertain and less prepared for adulthood than previous generations, professionals and parents say.

But hopeful signs include college-run preparation programs, job training and individualized wrap-around services that help fill in the gaps for today's new adults and encourage them to accept an adulthood that many of them hesitate to embrace.

Meanwhile, experts say, parents and other adults need to be patient, meet young people’s basic needs, and push them lovingly but firmly into a world that might make them uncomfortable.

Although some of the COVID Cohort bear the emotional scars of a traumatic time, today’s new adults are resilient, says Paige Eagan, provost and vice president for instruction at Kalamazoo Valley Community College. “But we have to be open to what that resilience looks like. It may not be what we originally pictured or fit in a neat societal box. But they are resilient, and they have a lot to provide us, now and in our future.”

The 'pandemic skip'

Cole overcame a dismal attendance record to graduate from Mattawan High School in 2023. Now, as a youth peer support specialist at ASK Family Services in Kalamazoo, she listens to other young people talk about the emotional distress and stalled momentum many link to the pandemic.

Adolescents nationwide had already reported increasing levels of depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts prior to 2020. With the advent of the pandemic, those trends blossomed into a mental health crisis, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  As classrooms went virtual, high school dropout rates increased. Kalamazoo Public Schools alone lost 16% of high school students to dropping out in the 2022–23 school year, compared to fewer than 9% before the pandemic.

The novelty of online education wore off quickly for students sequestered at home. Cole says that, alone in her room, with no hands-on learning to engage her and no human contact to make school seem real, she turned off her camera, slept through classes, and sank into anxiety, depression, and substance abuse.

Cole wasn't alone. The CDC's 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Survey reported two out of five teens felt disconnected from adults and peers in their school — a factor linked to an increased propensity for poor mental health, drug misuse and other risky behaviors.

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Around the country, the already thriving social media landscape boomed as stuck-at-home teens found solace in texts, chats and TikTok videos. Algorithms turned kids into targets, pushing unhealthy behaviors and encouraging friendships with strangers who could exploit them. Memes became the universal language, as teens absorbed the world in disappearing photos and fast-paced video snippets.

“Everyone I know has ADHD,” Cole says. “Our attention spans are just ruined.”

When she returned to in-person learning, Cole, like many of her classmates, was overwhelmed by how much education she’d missed. Panic attacks crippled her, and she felt unequipped to hold a simple conversation, much less work on group projects or give a speech.

Anxiety-triggered headaches kept her home more and more often, until she set a school record for absences. She constantly felt behind and resisted getting a job or a driver’s license.

“I just felt like I was in this hole,” she says, “and I couldn't get myself out of it.”

She graduated feeling like she was still a freshman − a phenomenon known as the “pandemic skip,” which the Newport Institute describes as “a sense among many young adults of having skipped an important period of social and emotional development due to shutdowns, social distancing, and remote learning and/or work."

"Three years after the height of the pandemic, despite normal life having fully resumed, some young adults feel their mental age and their current stage of life don’t match up to their chronological age,” the Newport Institute says. This arrested development can manifest as procrastination, outbursts, discouragement, evasion of responsibility, lack of motivation, and other symptoms of stunted emotional growth.

Cole still mourns her high school years, which feel to her like they didn’t exist, but holding down a job now helps her believe she can move forward despite that loss. Young people might have to take a leap into a frightening adult world to figure out how to survive in that world, Cole says.

“You just have to do it,” she says. “It’s uncomfortable, but it works.”

Guidance and a little push

New adults need a caring push to move them past the pandemic skip, says Kalamazoo psychotherapist Chris Olson.

The late teen years are supposed to be a time of “figuring out who you are and what you are and why you are and where you’re going” by building social, intellectual and emotional muscle via in-person interactions, Olson says. “And all that was stripped away from them as they sat in their bedrooms.”

While the pandemic made it easier to talk about mental health, it furthered a confusion between anxiety, a clinical disorder, and the discomfort that naturally accompanies stress. Teens who didn’t have to interact with “the weird kid” or decide where to sit in a crowded classroom missed out on discomfort that would have pushed them to learn social skills they needed, the therapist says. 

“You crawl before you walk,” Olson says. “They’ve had to leap now, and they’re just paralyzed.”

Today’s parents don’t want their kids to be uncomfortable, so they hesitate to push these high school grads to enroll in college, attend in-person classes or get a job. COVID put teenagers in their bedrooms, but parents made it OK for them to not come out, Olson says.

Let your kids be uncomfortable, the therapist advises parents who seek her help. Make them live in a dorm. Ask if they know how to find a job. Talk about what to do with their hands if they feel awkward.

Hold and nurture them with one hand and push with the other. “Tell them it’s OK to be scared,” she says, “but you still have to do it.”

‘Unprecedented’ help

While in college, young adults learn to do laundry, pay bills, manage money, expand their social circles and make weighty decisions. They see posters for seminars, job fairs and guest speakers. They learn about services and social opportunities and start to figure out what they like and where they belong.

More and more, however, high school grads opt out of those opportunities for growth. U.S. college and university enrollment, which was already in decline before 2020, nosedived during the pandemic. Locally, 40% of 2021 Kalamazoo Public School grads did not go on to college, compared to 30% who did not in 2019. 

“We had so much attention around students’ lost contact with teachers during the pandemic, which I think is true, but there are also so many other supports that they get in schools, such as counselors, after-school programs, and nonprofit organizations that work with and through the schools, who end up being really key in terms of everything from the college prep up to entry,” Bridget Terry Long, the dean and a professor of education and economics at Harvard Graduate School of Education, told Education Week in 2021.

Now, to keep students receiving the benefits of a higher education, colleges need to meet physical and emotional needs more than ever, says KVCC Provost Eagan. Several programs on KVCC’s campus focused on meeting those needs have improved grades and strengthened confidence for incoming students.

“It’s an odd time and an unprecedented time for our students,” Eagan says, “and how we handle it is unprecedented too.”

A year before the pandemic hit, hoping to help students afford college, KVCC launched a grocery giveaway program. The more than 10,000 boxes of food distributed — about 150 boxes a week during the school year — have removed one stressor for today’s stressed-out students, Eagan says.

Michigan Reconnect, a state program removing financial barriers for qualifying adult learners 25 and older, this year will temporarily include young adults ages 21–24. KVCC hopes the change bumps enrollment among the oldest members of the COVID Cohort, Eagan says.

Just prior to the pandemic, KVCC had shifted its student advising model to better help students explore career possibilities, Eagan says. The new model assigns incoming students to subject-specific advisors who connect them to tutoring, counseling and other services as needed. The change proved fortuitous for pandemic-impacted students, who benefit from its more-focused attention. 

Noticing that collaboration is a missing skill among new students, instructors of lab-based courses intentionally plan activities that teach teamwork and group communication skills.

“It’s OK if you don’t have all those skills,” Eagan says. “We just have to meet you where you are.”

Catching up

In addition, for the past two summers, KVCC has offered Valley Advantage, a three-week, state-funded program designed to let incoming students brush up on academic and social skills they may have missed in high school.

Last year 27 colleges across the state offered similar “catch-up” programs using funding allocated in the state budget and administered by the Michigan Community College Association (MCCA).

In KVCC’s program, students brush up on basic math and English skills, learn about college resources and discuss classroom anxiety, stress management and career options. As importantly, Eagan said, they relearn how to connect with other people and create relationships.

Because they may have to forgo work to attend, students get paid to complete the program. An analysis of last year’s program shows that Valley Advantage participants went on to achieve GPAs higher than the college average and reported increased self-confidence.

However, according to the MCCA, some colleges offering such catch-up programs report low participation, a lack of student engagement and logistical problems such as staffing, scheduling and transportation, the analysis notes. Some colleges indicated they might not continue their programs if state funding ends.

Eagan doesn’t yet know if KVCC will continue Valley Advantage, but she hopes so. The program helps struggling young adults thrive, she says.

“We’re excited to get them in the door,” Eagan says, “but we’re also excited to support them along the journey.”

Connections and check-ins

Another program, this one administered by The Kalamazoo Promise, focuses on a specific demographic “just getting lost in the wind” after high school — Black, Hispanic and Native American boys, says Melissa Nesbitt, pathway coach manager for The Promise.

While this local trend parallels a national trend of young minority males not enrolling in college, Nesbitt says that in the case of many KPS graduates, they don’t take advantage of − or don’t know about − The Promise, a scholarship program that could pay their college tuition.

“We’re reaching out to students, and it’s zero — radio silence,” Nesbitt says.

The Promise recently established Males of Promise, a program specifically targeting young minority males. Beginning with the 2024 graduating high school class, the program will provide these KPS grads intentional long-term interactions, regular check-ins and one-on-one encouragement and assistance, with the goal of more of the teens going to and staying in college.

Time will tell if the program works as planned, but already advisors have made more connections with The Promise’s 2024 cohort than with the previous year’s graduates, Nesbitt says.

Breyana Wilson, a 2020 Loy Norrix High School graduate and now a Promise pathway coach serving students at Phoenix High School and the Kalamazoo Innovative Learning Program, says connections and check-ins make all the difference when you spent high school talking through screens.

In her freshman year at  Western Michigan University, Wilson attended all her classes virtually. The virtual format had the comfort of familiarity, but having 75 strangers’ faces peering into her home made her anxious, and remote learning made it harder to get help from a professor or engage in group projects.

Wilson says that year she was “riding the struggle bus” and probably wouldn’t have stuck it out without a class called “Humanities for Everybody.” The class’s weekly one-on-one check-ins with an advisor helped Wilson get past mental health and other struggles, gave her a sense of community and kept her in school.

Meanwhile, she says, many of her high school friends didn’t go to college or went but dropped out because they were overwhelmed, unprepared and disconnected from on-campus supports that might have helped them stick it out. Others, inundated with the version of young adulthood hawked on social media, expected to land high-paying positions that required little work and no training. 

Mostly, Wilson says, her peers feel pressured to make money quickly and may eschew college for the immediate payoff of even a low-paying job, preferring what feels like security over a four-year educational commitment.

“School just doesn’t seem profitable to a lot of students,” Nesbitt confirms. While data show that higher education does pay off financially, many grads who in previous years might have taken advantage of The Promise are walking away from tuition help. And program officials don’t know how to find them.

“How do we get to them?” Nesbitt muses. “That’s the tricky part. Where are they?”

Skills and growth

Some of them, it appears, are learning job skills and getting to work.

Job training has long been the focus of the Kalamazoo Regional Educational Service Agency’s MyCITY program, which teaches communication skills, teamwork, self-confidence and other competencies that are needed now more than ever, says Molly Fitz Henry, program coordinator.

Students 14 to 24 years old gain paid work experience through MyCITY, which places young people in supervised positions with local employers. MyCITY serves about 200 students during the summer and about 50 during fall and spring sessions.

Fitz Henry says teaching job skills is more critical now than ever. Work supervisors have seen that pandemic experiences can cause problems in the workplace for many in the COVID Cohort. 

Members of the cohort know what they’re willing — and not willing — to do, but they struggle with constructive criticism. They often lack teamwork skills and don’t engage in social aspects of employment, she notes.

Morgan Smith, now 19, was a freshman at Loy Norrix High School when the pandemic lockdowns started stripping away her social skills.

Disconnected from teachers and peers, the gregarious teen slept through virtual classes and skipped homework. When she returned to in-person school, she couldn’t face teachers whose classes she had failed online, so she missed more instruction. Her confidence and GPA ruined, she was held back and lost track of which grade she was in while her classmates fumbled toward graduation.

That lack of connection spread to students’ interactions with one another, she says. The school’s once-boisterous cafeteria was silent, students who used to laugh and talk looked at the screens that had become their primary connection with the world.

“It’s more chill now,” and kids are starting to talk to each other again, a smiling Smith reports. She’s doing better too, crediting her several-year participation in the MyCITY program, where her employment at two thrift stores, Public Media Network, and at a summer camp taught her to build a resume, hold conversations, identify her skills and see her own value. With those skills in her pocket, Smith says she feels ready to be an adult and has the confidence it takes to eventually land her dream job as a nursing home caregiver.

Research by the Brookings Institute and Child Trends provides evidence of the importance of connecting young people to the workforce, and the U.S. Department of Labor highlights the positive impact work training can have on young people's mental health. The pandemic ratcheted up the value of such experiences, says Fitz Henry, and programs like MyCITY could hold a key to connecting the COVID Cohort to a productive, healthy future.

Instead of bemoaning the state of “kids these days,” Henry says, community members can invest in the young people who need a little extra help but also have a lot to offer. Take them seriously. Give them jobs. Include them in decisions, she advises.

After all, she says, “young people have so much potential to do amazing things.”

This story is part of the Youth Mental Health Reporting Project of the Southwest Michigan Journalism Collaborative. SWMJC is a group of 12 regional organizations dedicated to strengthening local journalism. Visit swmichjournalism.com to learn more.