Lost generation Lockdown legacy for children is school refusal and anxiety

Five years from the start of the UK's first lockdown, the Guardian considers how the pandemic changed children's lives

- Sally Weale

When it comes to disasters, children are habitually "ignored and mistreated", according to the disasters expert Prof Lucy Easthope. So five years ago, when schools were told to close and lessons went online, a siren went off inside her.

"The lockdown terrified me," she said. The government's planning was focused on keeping children safe, but many were at increased risk from family abuse at home. The introduction of online schooling, meanwhile, broke the hard-earned social contract between schools and parents "for a lifetime".

Schools are still dealing with "terrifyingly high levels of school avoidance", said Easthope. But where once parents and teachers worked together to help a school-refusing child back into class, suddenly there were parents who no longer saw the value of school.

Five years on, the fallout continues. Uncertainty, increased inequality, accelerated screen use and crippling anxiety are just a few of the Covid legacies affecting children and young people. From Covid babies who are now five and struggling to meet basic developmental milestones, to the 1.6 million children in England still persistently absent from school, and students whose university years were stolen by the pandemic still struggling with mental health.

Simultaneously, the relationship between children and screens changed irrevocably. Easthope remembers seeing her five-year-old with three devices open in front of her to access online lessons during lockdown. "It was our laptop she was talking through; she had to load things on a tablet and she had a phone as well. I just felt this desperate sinking feeling about what we had just done."