Whether it’s attending lectures at school, making a memorable first impression at that first office job, or cleaning the floor at a concert, many social etiquette are inherently gender-specific. young was broken by pandemic caused by corona virus.
That has made people like Thuan Phung, a student at Parsons School of Design living in Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan, feel “strange” about real-life interactions. After two years of virtual teaching, he’s back in the classroom.
“On Zoom, you can mute it,” says Phung, 25. “It took me a while to learn how to talk to people.”
Now, a recent study of people’s personalities shows that the discomfort he feels is not uncommon for those of his generation, who are forced to isolate by limitations. pandemic in their 20s, a period of social anxiety for many of them.
COVID is not only reshaping the way we work and connect with others, it’s also redrawing the way we are, according to research, showing some of the effects most pronounced in young people.
According to research published last month in the journal PLOS ONE, our key personality traits may have faded making us less outgoing and creative, less agreeable and less conscientious. , according to research published last month in the journal PLOS ONE.
These declines equate to “about a decade of normative personality change,” the study said. Those under the age of 30 exhibit “interrupted maturation”. The study’s authors write that that change is the opposite of how a young person’s personality develops normally over time.
If these changes are long-term, this evidence suggests that population-wide stressful events may slightly warp the trajectory of personality, especially in young people, the study said. ,” the study said.
The authors of the personality study drew on data from the Understanding America Study, an ongoing internet panel at the University of Southern California that first began collecting survey responses in 2014, based on publicly available data from approximately 7,000 participants who responded to a curated personality assessment. before and during the pandemic.
Angelina Sutin, the paper’s lead author and a professor at Florida State University, said the study’s findings suggest that personality changes, on average, during the pandemic, though she stressed that the findings document “a snapshot in time” and may be temporary.
“Personality tends to be quite resistant to change. It could be like a global pandemic,” says Sutin. “But it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what it is about pandemic lead to these changes. “
Sutin and her co-authors also don’t know if those personality changes will continue.
The researchers analyzed five aspects of personality: a person’s neuroticism, stress tolerance and negative emotions; openness, defined as originality and creativity; extroversion, or the way a person is extroverted; agreeable, or “trusting and forthright”; and one’s commitment, level of responsibility, and organization.
Gerald Clore, professor of psychology emeritus at the University of Virginia, said the authors were “appropriately cautious” in their conclusions and stressed the need for more research to double-check the findings. detect.
The pandemic itself has been a “hell of an experiment,” Clore said, suggesting it could be the restructuring of habits rather than the overall stress that has reshaped personality. of human.
Perhaps because of those changes, some therapists say, interest in psychotherapy has skyrocketed during the pandemic. Virtual therapy has also exploded.
At Talkspace, an online therapy delivery platform, the number of active individual users grew 60% from March 2020 to a year later, said John Kim, a company spokesman.
A spokesperson for the online therapy company said the number of teens seeking therapy at BetterHelp has nearly quadrupled since 2019.
Therapists practicing in the United States say they have observed their clients struggling with navigating the limits of pandemic life and dealing with the ups and downs of social norms.
Nedra Glover Tawwab, a therapist based in Charlotte, North Carolina who has her own practice and more than 1 million followers on Instagram, says she’s noticed increasing discomfort as people gradually get along. re-entering previous routines, such as working in an office.
Glover Tawwab said: “We were so used to isolation and now we think we love it. “But is that really who you are? Or is that what you had to get in the meantime? “
Delta Hunter, a therapist in New York City who has facilitated a anxiety-social therapy groupsaid the pandemic “complicated” existing anxiety.
“People wanted to connect and process together and we weren’t able to do that,” says Hunter. “People feel really lost because of that.”
Sutin’s study concludes: Younger people, and adolescents in particular, face greater restrictions on activities and experiences that are typical of adolescence and young adulthood. It showed that those under the age of 30 who displayed the most conscientiousness and agreeableness fell the most.
“When your whole world goes into cyberspace, you lose the training ground to be more committed,” says Harmon, adding that she has seen a lot of social anxiety in the world. the younger generation, perhaps because they have not yet accumulated much human experience and coping skills.
A few months ago, Anviksha Kalscheur’s practice in Chicago established a youth support program to help young people deal with feelings of being lost and isolated.
She said teenagers expressed a negative view of the future and increased social anxiety. Therapists have noticed “a bit of a dark cloud” in their clients’ visions as they become aware of the uncertainty of the coming years, says Kalscheur.
Connecting, engaging and interacting with others is crucial for personality development, says Kalscheur, adding that identity and character are still being formed during adolescence.
“You’re at that stage of development where they don’t get those cues, those attachments, the learnings, like all the different parts that happen that you don’t even think about,” she said. . “So, of course, your environment has a huge impact and within that particular time frame.”
The changes of pandemic period The study’s authors say it will ultimately remain an open question.
Therapists including Glover Tawwab say the transition to life directly after the worst of a crisis can provide an opportunity to slowly reintegrate and reconnect with people and experiences in a meaningful way. more purposeful.
“This is a great time to really observe the things you miss and the things you like from afar,” she says. “So we have time now to create what we really want.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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