Kids at Home aren't Really 'at Home' During COVID-19

Family is no longer the only place of connection.

Photo by Richy Srirachanikorn (2021). Brookhaven RP on ROBLOX.

One may assume, because of a global threat outside the door, families are more cohesive and connected than ever. However, reports of domestic abuse, stress, and tension between members are painting a new kind of threat to the family that originates within the household. Although conflict and tension are not unusual with crises, the ones during COVID-19 has proven to be so perplexing that the pandemic has been described as a ‘once in a lifetime’ international experiment on family life.

Throughout this "once in a lifetime experiment", one finding has rung true across research:

the bearer of these challenges are the children.

Where adults are occupied with mending economic, psychological, and romantic ties, youth left at home face the challenge of learning how to live and be loved themselves.

A love always accessible and instant

In searching for love, it seems technology has become the stand-in parent for many children. In fact, the 4-hour a day average of digital media usage prior to the pandemic has since proliferated in children aged 11-13 by 20%, and significantly for adolescents aged 14-17 by over 30%. Of these online endeavours, the use of virtual worlds has become a dominant activity for young users.

Notably, a year since the WHO’s declaration that COVID-19 was a global pandemic, the popular virtual game ‘ROBLOX’ amassed over 23 billion visits in just one of its most popular games. Interestingly, half of its most played games were family oriented, with roleplaying and relationship-building titles such as Adopt Me!, MeepCity, and Welcome to Bloxburg.

Photo by Richy Srirachanikorn (2021). MeepCity Customization Screen on ROBLOX.

But superpowers, green frizzly hair, and servant robots who complete homework aside, these findings are concerning when placed in the backdrop that youth are experiencing a “second pandemic” of stress and anxiety. After all, it seems unlikely that a spike in games related to themes of familyhood and care, when its young players are literally at home, is a choice motivated by just boredom.

Making yourself a(t) home

Photo by Richy Srirachanikorn (2021). Welcome to Bloxburg on ROBLOX.

A decade ago, researchers interviewing users aged 10-14 on their motivations to join a virtual world found the common motivation to ‘embody some aspect of their real selves’ which they cannot attain. A few years later, older users of popular MMORPG World Of Warcraft were found to experience lower levels of loneliness and anxiety when immersed in their digital environment.

What this means for the pandemic is that our use of technology to reconstruct a familiar reality instead of diverting to one entirely new, has remained as the way in which we express our needs with our devices.

In abusive households, adult members feeling the stress and anxiety akin to youth’s ‘second pandemic’ used technology as a tool to 'cling' onto a distant life prior to the global shutdown. For youth, these worlds – resembling enough of their family – paved a cross-cultural path to meet their social needs while mitigating feelings of isolation.

Building with confusion and conflict

Sociologically, these motivations of desiring routine and familiarity may stem from what family demographer Megan Sweeney terms “Boundary Ambiguity”.

In stepfamilies, new members must work to become a unit resembling a family of redefined relationships, rules, and social implications. In this instance, there are no playbooks for adults on how to run a family amidst a pandemic, least of all one for children on understanding the lesser care to be received from their overworked parents.

Notably, working mothers hit hardest by the pandemic in Canada had to juggle part-time jobs while caring for their children. Similarly, the lack of spousal support in household chores left 57% of American single mothers feeling ‘worse productivity’.

As a result, this gave parents a care crisis while their children received a loss of care.

What does all this mean?

Photo by Richy Srirachanikorn (2021). Royale High on ROBLOX.

Ultimately, youth depend on the sanctity and historically, the stability of the family, as their "first form of society". Researchers have suggested that interruptions to the family resonate as tensions across generations and resources. Prior to COVID-19, children of unstable families with non-present parents later suffer in their future relationships and struggle with early participation in sexual behaviour. Of course, these studies were conducted before COVID changed how we understood what it means to balance digital and real-world families and societies.

It is crucial that in this transition period, where the world is increasingly digital and connections are made -- and sustained -- remotely, that we are curating a future where youth can successfully connect with their real-world and digital families in spite of, and sustaining this into, an era of the ‘new normal’.

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This piece was originally written for an op-ed class assignment, "Sociology of The Family" with Dr. Yue Qian in 2021, at the University of British Columbia.