{"id":33137,"date":"2025-11-04T18:57:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T18:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/33137\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T18:57:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T18:57:07","slug":"usfsp-on-how-the-covid-19-pandemic-reshaped-education-and-social-interaction-the-crows-nest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/33137\/","title":{"rendered":"USFSP on how the COVID-19 pandemic reshaped education and social interaction\u00a0 \u2013 The Crow’s Nest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Photo by Makenna Wozniak | The Crow\u2019s Nest<\/p>\n

By Julia Birdsall<\/p>\n

Nearly six years ago, the world changed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

People were absent from their jobs, their schools and their loved ones for months, or years in some cases.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While the worst of the threat is over and people are free to work, attend classes and see their loved ones as much as they would like, the impacts of the pandemic still linger \u2014 especially on college campuses where students were shaped by COVID-19 at various points in their academic careers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Michael Schneider, a freshman digital communications and multimedia journalism major, was in 7th grade when COVID-19 moved in-person classes online.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He told The Crow\u2019s Nest that he had the opportunity to go back to in-person learning for his eighth-grade year but chose not to.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI had gotten so comfortable staying at home and doing my work and just going out in Zoom classes that I was kinda like a hermit at the time,\u201d Schneider said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, in college, he finds that online asynchronous classes are more \u201cconvenient\u201d for him. He prefers them to in-person classes and especially to synchronous online courses, mostly because of his experience with Zoom classes during the COVID-19 lockdown.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn our generation, I\u2019d say if you asked them about how they thought about Zoom calls, people would probably say, \u2018Oh yeah, I showed up, but I didn\u2019t pay attention at all,\u2019\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sophomore speech, language and hearing sciences major, Victorya Santos, was in eighth grade when the pandemic hit and said that she experienced a similar disconnect from learning during her months at home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She told The Crow\u2019s Nest that her school didn\u2019t provide any education for the first few weeks of the lockdown, which may have contributed to a \u201cphone addiction.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Santos returned to school in fall 2020, but she stated that returning to in-person learning and starting high school was a shock.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI definitely started to fail a little bit at the beginning of my freshman year because of the lack of study help,\u201d Santos said. \u201cI think COVID definitely \u2014 I wouldn\u2019t say regressed me \u2014 but it just made me more lazy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

While Santos\u2019 education has not regressed on account of COVID-19 lockdowns, studies show that this is the case for a number of students.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Harvard Graduate School of Education wrote<\/a> that \u201cThe average U.S. public school student in grades 3-8 lost the equivalent of a half year of learning in math and a quarter of a year in reading.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Victor Gallego, a senior biology major who was a junior in high school when the pandemic hit, said that the open-note quizzes and tests that his school offered to accommodate for online or hybrid learners in the months after the lockdown made testing too easy and had \u201cslowly but surely lessened the use of critical thinking skills and true study skills.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI went from studying hard and organically doing my best, my junior year\u2026 My senior year I barely studied for any test or quiz that came, and putting off that hard work ended up setting a precedent that was not good,\u201d he told The Crow\u2019s Nest.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t just students noticing the pandemic\u2019s impact on their academic abilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Julie Buckner Armstrong, an English professor who has been teaching at the University of South Florida for about 25 years, noticed a shift in her students\u2019 capability to complete assignments in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a literature class I used to [assign] way more than one novel\u2014it might be a class where we read novels\u2014and there might be a book a week,\u201d they said. \u201cThere\u2019s no way I would assign a book a week now because students either can\u2019t or won\u2019t read it. And that\u2019s true of English majors.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

She also told The Crow\u2019s Nest that, while they do not know whether or not the cause of this can directly be linked to the lockdown, Armstrong does believe that more time spent online \u201ctranslates to shorter attention spans and less ability to concentrate deeply.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

This trend may align with students\u2019 increasing habits of cognitive offloading in academic settings by using AI<\/a>. Though the potential causes<\/a> behind this phenomenon are still being studied, increased phone usage during the pandemic, as Santos experienced, may be one factor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, according to Armstrong, students have become \u201cmuch more visually literate.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

An article<\/a> published by The National Institute of Health (NIH) shows a link between social media usage and visual literacy skills.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Social media became one of the main ways for people, especially young people, to communicate with one another during the lockdown, which could explain why students became inclined to spend more time on their phones.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Schneider said that video games were his and many of his peers\u2019 main form of connection with one another during the lockdown.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, he finds that communicating through online platforms is easier for him because he \u201cgot so used to it\u201d during the pandemic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While this form of communication was found to be positive and essential during the lockdown, excessive internet usage has been linked to mental health issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMore active and prolonged SM [social media] usage was associated with a negative impact on MH [mental health] of adolescents and students,\u201d the NIH found<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This relates to another change that Armstrong witnessed in students: their proclivity to open up about mental health, which may be linked to the isolation that students experienced during the COVID-19 lockdown.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause there is a lot of social isolation and it does exacerbate things like anxiety and depression,\u201d she said. \u201c[Students] are much more likely to verbalize and advocate for themselves if they are getting treatment for those kinds of things.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The heightened awareness of mental health issues was one positive impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Another, Gallego observed, was that he and many others discovered the importance of maintaining friendships.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe memories you make with people can help [form] a friendship. I think the absence of said memories [during COVID-19] helped contribute to the demise of some friendships,\u201d Gallego told The Crow\u2019s Nest.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since returning to school and entering college, Gallego said that he always tries to make the most of his time with others.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cIf there\u2019s anything the COVID pandemic and that time period taught me,\u201d Gallego said, \u201c[It\u2019s that] it\u2019s important to treasure those who are close to you and also never be afraid to reach out to other people.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n


\n\t\t\t\t Post Views: 20 \n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\"More<\/a>
Written by: Julia Birdsall<\/a> on November 4, 2025.
Last revised by: Alisha Durosier<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo by Makenna Wozniak | The Crow\u2019s Nest By Julia Birdsall Nearly six years ago, the world changed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-33137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}