How Youth Have Harnessed Social Media During the Pandemic

Iliana Garner

From communicating with others in an instant to promoting important causes, youth have come to rely on social media a lot more during the pandemic.

Since Chicago has gone into lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s become very difficult to engage in face to face communication. Meetups are now conducted through Zoom and get-togethers are limited and kept at a safe distance of six feet apart. Therefore, regular face to face communication is harder than ever to maintain.

For youth, this proves to be even more of a challenge. As of August 5th, Mayor Lightfoot announced that Chicago Public Schools would be held completely virtually for all grade levels. This is a continuation from the previous year’s remote learning policy that was put into place due to the pandemic. This has greatly affected youth’s ability to communicate since the majority of their social interactions come from being together in schools.

However, youth have found new ways to connect with each other while at home. Social media platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter among others have helped youth keep in touch. These platforms have built in messaging and posting features, which allow users to message and update peers on their life and interact with each other. These features have become increasingly useful as many shift to virtual communication.

“Before quarantine I used social media as more of a way to create an ‘aesthetic’ and post pictures,” says Nicole Beubian. “Now that I don’t really get to see my friends in person anymore, I use social media to communicate with friends, as well as try to build new relationships and be more social.”

In addition to communication, many youth have been using social media as a tool for activism. In late May, in response to the death of George Floyd, protests advocating for the Black Lives Matter movement broke out. Since Chicago was still in the midst of a pandemic and not everyone was able to go out and protest, many took to social media to safely advocate for these causes.

“With recent events, [social media] has become really good for raising awareness and spreading information,” says Eliza Trojan. She continues on to say how she has used social media to learn about others’ experiences with issues like systematic racism.

From signing petitions to posting educational resources, many took advantage of the accessibility the internet provided to become activists without actually setting foot in the streets of downtown. On-site protesters also used the platform their social media pages created to post videos from protests. People were able to be directly involved in a movement without leaving their living room.

The pandemic is certainly changing the way we use social media and this change can carry on even after the pandemic is over. We have learned to rely on social media to communicate with not only our friends, but with people from all around the world in an instant. We have now seen how powerful social media can become in inciting and publicizing movements. Thanks to the virtual platforms we have created for ourselves, we are now able to connect and share information on a global scale.

“I believe that the pandemic and other events that have happened in the last couple of months made a lot of us realize that social media can bring us together and that social media can be used to help others,” says Erika Leon. “In the future I can see a lot more people using social media to have a positive impact on the world.“