Remote Learning and the Potential Effects on Future Leadership

The shift to remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic has been detrimental to the psychological and social-emotional development of high school students. In an effort to research and report on high school students’ mental well-being and self-efficacy following widespread lockdowns and transitions to remote learning, I conducted a qualitative study.

As part of this study, I created an online survey to determine the effects of this abrupt transition. I found that the majority of participants—all of whom are high school students from various parts of the country—reported increased levels of anxiety, thus resulting in inferior academic performance, poor work ethic, disordered behaviors, emotional volatility and social disinterest.

The effects of this psychological transition from face-to-face, cooperative learning to remote learning may pose further mental health concerns with regard to building a healthy sense of self-efficacy. I, therefore, insist that this problematic shift for the sake of public safety has come at a price, and high school students are experiencing its consequences, the likes of which may have major implications for the future of education, American leadership, and individual character development.

The effects of this psychological transition from face-to-face, cooperative learning to remote learning may pose further mental health concerns with regard to building a healthy sense of self-efficacy.

In conjunction with this discussion, I will address substantive issues that must be confronted in adolescent research and summarize evidence on the utility of self-efficacy as an important quality with which to undertake leadership positions as well as for predicting motivational outcomes.

As part of the online survey responses, students have confessed to compromising their academic integrity in order to satisfy deadlines, exigencies, and standards.

“I have probably cheated on every test, and it is going to be very difficult to study,” said one student.

“[I have] lost motivation to work hard in all aspects in life,” said another.

The source of high school students’ emotional distress leading to a decrease in self-efficacy is both generic and personal, academic and social-emotional. The generic causes—a wide range of ongoing stressors associated with academic demands and a collective uncertainty of the future—have been the most prevalent. Based on the inferences of my research, that self-efficacy has been shown to play an important role in achievement contexts and underpins the outcomes of achievement-related actions. Results have indicated that self-efficacy is an accurate predictor for affective-motivational variables and academic success.

Therefore, it is paramount that mental health services train their clinicians to address such issues of academic, social, and psychological relevance by first understanding a potential causative factor: the shift to remote learning. When analyzing their adolescent patients, practitioners should note the significance of these negative effects, as well as the role they may play in the long run. Whether this remains a “catch-22 scenario” depends on the rate at which professionals address this problem without escalation. A catch-22 scenario would imply an irreversibility to these issues, brought upon by a problem whose solution is denied by a circumstance inherent in the problem. Clinicians should use more curative mechanisms, geared toward helping students develop healthy psychological self-constructs by which to raise their mental health status.

Test participants also provided me with a lengthy list of mental health concerns due to social inactivity. Many students have experienced stunts or shifts in social-emotional development. For some students, this has manifested in medical and psychological diagnoses.

“I got diagnosed with bipolar disorder and anorexia,” said one student.

Another student describes the impact of being disconnected from social peers: “During the beginning of lockdown, it was hard to maintain a normal sleeping schedule. It was also extremely difficult to maintain a normal consistent diet. My mental health has always been rocky, but during the lockdowns, I finally met a breaking point [at which point I] was forced to enter emergency mental health services.”

“I never exercise,” said another. “I’ve lost friends…my life is falling apart, I got diagnosed with depression, anxiety, and ADHD.”

Further, students are becoming both more desensitized to sociopolitical issues, as well as more compartmentalized. These two issues can be traced back to the same root problem: a higher volume of social media usage and internalization of conflicting views and beliefs. Respondents directly admitted to feeling more “detached” from their personal lives, substituting family time for time spent “wastefully” on social media. If this problem continues without conscious validation (accepting the truth of lockdown-related mental health declines as self-evident), it may escalate into a societal issue that manifests later in students’ personal and professional lives in more tangible forms.

Combined with these apparent effects of excessive social media usage is the circulation of misinformation across several platforms. This leaves adolescents exposed to the associated vulnerabilities of false information, meanwhile subjecting the pandemic to disregard and trivialization. Poor decision-making regarding health and safety precautions are fueled by false narratives on the severity of the pandemic.

Finally, excessive screen-time has risen in correlation with decreases in academic achievement, which, in turn, has been detrimental to many students’ sleep schedules and exercise habits.

Finally, excessive screen-time has risen in correlation with decreases in academic achievement, which, in turn, has been detrimental to many students’ sleep schedules and exercise habits. Some comments on the impact of increased screen time on sleep and exercise include:

“Less sleep because of increased screen time. More depressed because of less real interaction with people. More irritable and frustrated.”

“Computers and screens make me feel drained, by the end of my classes I don’t want to do anything on technology, and I don’t get things done.”

“Because of the pandemic, I deleted most of my social media apps because I was spending too much time on them at home.”

“Can’t focus in class. Don’t complete homework at all. Increased anxiety and depression. No motivation for exercise, complete schoolwork, or go to social events.”

The negative impact of remote learning may be unaccounted for by elected officials and, therefore, by the national education system. But the increased incidences of mental health problems in high school aged individuals, including stress-related disorders, may have a causal relationship with remote learning. Until this possibility is addressed, high school students will continue to lack qualities of self-efficacy, initiative, and leadership—all of which are major determinants of the future of student behavior and the education system itself.

Maya Kaarina Wertheim is a sophomore at YULA Girls High School in Los Angeles, California and the Principal Investigator of a research project that analyzes the impact of remote learning on Jewish high school students’ mental well-being and self-efficacy.