Corona-cation

The world has taken on the look of a sci-fi movie. Empty streets, barren shelves, and scared people. A world overturned by a virus … and all the teenagers are stuck at home. The “supposed time of our lives” has been forced into a house full of our annoying siblings and overbearing parents. How are we to survive? Simple: sleep all day, binge watch Netflix all night, and of course, throw a little school work in there. So how are we teenagers surviving this COVID-19 quarantine? The answer is slowly and painfully.

What is there for us to do during quarantine? 

When you think about it, quite a lot. We have books, puzzles, board games, workouts, bikes, cellphones, and, for those fortunate enough, siblings to bother and waste time with. So why is it that most teenagers are quadrupling their screen time during this time at home? To be honest, we don’t even know. Contrary to popular belief, we do get sick of our phones sometimes and need a break. But without access to friends and our usual hangout spots, such as parks and malls, we are kind of stuck on what to do. As teenagers, most of us don’t typically play board games with our families or can even stand being around them for long amounts of time. So we revert to what we know, and that just so happens to be technology. Generation Z isn’t referred to as iGen for no reason, we known our tech.

Why is it that most teenagers are hating quarantine when it sounds just like a dream?

Long answer short, we really miss our friends. Yeah, FaceTime and WhatsApp are great but there is nothing like a good old fashioned social interaction with people that we have chosen to be parts of our lives. Seeing the same people every single day is starting to get boring. If you ask most teenagers what would make this widespread quarantine bearable, it would be a resounding call for our friends. Personally, I had a friend pick something up from my house the other day and we had a conversation through a window. She told me it was weird to hear my voice after so long. It has been a little over a month of quarantine and already we are starting to forget what it was like before it.

So how are we handling this quarantine? 

Anyone you ask will more than likely say that they can not wait for this quarantine to be over. For many seniors, it has taken the most exciting moments of highschool or college away from them. And for the rest of us, the excitement of time away from school has passed, and now all we want is to be free and to get everything back to normal. In the meantime, those quarantine memes won’t stop and we will continue to utterly destroy our sleeping habits because, let’s face it, we are practically nocturnal now. So on behalf of all teenagers I say, stay safe, stay healthy, and let us wallow in our rooms. We’ll come out eventually.