Introduction

Nineteen-year old Meera (name changed), who hails from a village in the interiors of Jharkhand, was on the cusp of entering the first semester of her B.Com Degree when the COVID-19 pandemic first hit. She was the first in her family to attend college and the first in her family to receive a scholarship to aid her studies. But the pandemic dealt an unrelenting blow thrusting the promise of a brighter future into complete darkness. Her father lost his job during lockdown plunging the entire family into financial insecurity. Meera’s scholarship too, fell through. When she did eventually secure the funds to pay her fees through the support of a local women’s self-help group (SHG) and a few generous neighbors, there were more hurdles to overcome—the specter of digital education. Her family barely had the funds for a mobile recharge, much less a stable internet connection. Meera’s access to her online classes became more and more tenuous. She either had to forgo classes completely or rely on her peers for help. This process continued to get complicated. What had started out as her being a scholarship student poised for success with the possibility of being able to pull her family out of poverty, had turned into a nightmare.

Over the months of living with the global pandemic, Meera’s story is not an uncommon one. Countless adolescents and young people like her across the country—especially in vulnerable communities and marginalized social contexts—grappled with myriad financial, social, gendered, and emotional burdens due to the pandemic [1]. While isolation from peers took a severe toll on young people’s mental health, other struggles were also encountered, like that of the vast digital divide, the added responsibilities of house work and care work for young girls, increased domestic violence and increased likelihood of girls dropping out of school and being forced into unwanted marriages.

India has the world’s largest young population—253 million. Every fifth person in the country is between the ages of 10 to 19 years [2]. This period of adolescence is a critical formative period in the life of an individual. Habits formed at this young age become the foundation for adulthood. At the same time, adolescents experience a unique set of struggles. While education plays a key role in their lives, they are also more susceptible to a wide spectrum of communicable and chronic health conditions including nutritional deficiencies, substance abuse, mental health and reproductive and sexual health problems. At the same time, they have limited access to quality health services and health-related information— particularly around sexual and reproductive health. Digital challenges and gender-based violence continues to put adolescents at grave risk. COVID-19 has further exacerbated these risks and heightened inequalities.

Witnessing these realities, the Centre for Catalyzing Change (C3), an organization working for more than 30 years of experience with adolescents, decided that it was important to assess the impact of the pandemic on adolescents’ lives and their lived realities during the pandemic. With multiple telephonic surveys and dialogues in states like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Odisha and more, covering thousands of adolescents as well as stakeholders who interact closely with them, C3 made an effort to understand the risk factors affecting school dropouts including early marriage, health (including physical, reproductive, menstrual, and mental health), nutrition, and digital access.

Here’s what these surveys told us:

Access to Food and Essential Commodities

Earlier we used to have two side dishes for a meal but now we manage with only one dish. My younger brother used to have milk twice a day but now he has it only once a day. We have minimized our food consumption to manage within our available resources.

—Adolescent girl, Uttar Pradesh.

Perhaps the most immediate and significant impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was the resulting financial crisis which resulted in widespread loss of livelihoods among vulnerable and marginalized families and the lack of resources to purchase food and essential commodities. Difficulties were widely reported in procuring milk, vegetables and other essential groceries, not only in C3’s initial survey with adolescents in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Odisha (between April and August, 2020), but also in the Lived Realities Survey that was conducted across nine states. Respondents in the former survey reported that only 20% of adolescents could easily access these essential supplies [3, 4].

There were distinct gendered differences in how these gaps in access were experienced. Marginally a higher percentage of young girls (39%) faced difficulties in accessing essential commodities in comparison to young boys (34%). The gendered effects were more pronounced in the gap in access. The responsibility of going out even during the strict lockdown restrictions and procuring essential supplies (like groceries and other household products) fell significantly on adolescent boys (74%). The mobility of young girls was severely curbed. Girls were only allowed to go outside when they had to perform household chores like fetching water, bathing, and washing clothes (since the sources of water were in most cases located largely outside their houses). Only 39% of the girls were allowed to venture out within their villages on their own compared to 62% of boys of the same age who were allowed to go out.

School Closures, Disruptions in Education, and the Gendered Digital Divide

I wanted to nrol for school. But it is closed and there are no admissions right now

—Adolescent girl, Maharashtra.

The COVID-19 pandemic shed a cruel and incisive light on the tenuous access adolescent girls in India had to formal education. It also highlighted the vast gendered divide in digital access and digital literacy.

For adolescents, especially adolescent girls from marginalized, economically impoverished rural backgrounds, schools are often safe spaces. For them, schools often go beyond simply being a source of knowledge to becoming a larger medium of exposure to opportunities, ideas, and modes of expression that they otherwise cannot access in their social and familial settings. In fact, for countless adolescent girls, schools become an essential means to circumvent the burden of early marriage and for securing their future rather than being coerced into patriarchal social norms and practices.

And so, with the closing of schools as the COVID-19 pandemic began, adolescents were completely left in the lurch. Among the school going adolescents surveyed initially in Bihar, Odisha, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh, 96% were grappling with school closure and nearly half of these adolescents had not been provided with any guidance/support for studying during the first COVID-19 lockdown. Here too there was a gendered divide. More boys (54%) than girls (49%) reported that their teachers had provided them with guidance. During the pandemic, adolescents also faced other shortages that hindered their ability to study. Between April and August, 2020, 48% could not access essential textbooks and notebooks. The other daunting, almost insurmountable, challenge was that of digital access.

Even before the pandemic, India alone accounted for nearly half of the world’s gendered digital divide [5]. The pandemic further highlighted how gender biases, financial constraints, lack of infrastructural support, and absence of digital skills puts young girls at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to digital access. In a survey conducted in association with the Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) across 29 districts in 10 states, C3 found that 71% of the adolescent girl respondents did not own a mobile phone because they could not afford it and 79% did not have a computer at home [6]. At the same time, access to digital modes in community facilities like schools, community centres, and internet cafés was severely limited with 83% of the girls getting less than even an hour of internet access in a week. But this is not where the struggle ended; 65% of the teachers and 60% of the community organizations said that parents often considered mobile phones ‘unsafe’ and an ‘unhealthy distraction’ for their adolescent daughters. Even when families and adolescents could afford smartphones, computers, and other digital devices, male family members were given priority and precedence over the female family members.

Given that online learning was, and continues to be, the most significant transformation within the educational system in the aftermath of the pandemic, this lack of digital access and digital literacy for young girls alienated them from education even further. Stories like that of Meera, who despite getting admission into a reputed college experienced significant hurdles in her education due to inadequate digital access, are widespread. There were anecdotal reports of young girls getting forced into early marriage because they did not have the digital resources to continue their online education. And even more disturbing, there were cases of young girls succumbing to suicide due to the frustration and angst of not having digital access for attending online classes.

Barriers in Health Service Delivery

Managing menstrual hygiene without access to sanitary napkins was a huge challenge faced by us. Shops were closed and government supplies were not available during this period

—Adolescent girl, Odisha.

With the public health system, especially in rural areas, being overburdened with COVID-19, other essential health services were severely disrupted during the two waves of the pandemic. The supply of essential nutritional supplements like iron and folic acid (IFA) tablets important for tackling anemia and the supply of sanitary napkins at community centres and medical shops and access to other reproductive health services was hampered due to lockdown restrictions and the diversion of resources and public health manpower to battle COVID-19. In Bihar, 87% of the elected women representatives surveyed reported that women and girls did not receive IFA tablets. In Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, only 1% of the girls surveyed reported receiving sanitary napkins during the initial lockdown.

This paints a dire picture indeed. Girls from marginalized, rural communities often rely on local anganwadi centres (AWCs) and community leaders for their essential health needs anganwadi workers (AWWs) were overworked and overburdened with the pandemic response, and so sidelined adolescent girls’ health needs which could have devastating long-term implications. With the already exacerbated food insecurity during the pandemic, long-term nutritional health outcomes among young girls are likely to worsen. Because of the inadequate supply of sanitary napkins and other menstrual hygiene products, girls resorted to unsafe and incredibly damaging forms of menstrual management such as using used, unsterilized cloth, scraps and so on which can not only cause reproductive tract infections but can also have other long-term health impacts.

The Crushing Toll on Adolescent Mental Health

The pandemic has led me to worry about what will happen to my studies in the future. Because of this, I am unable to eat or sleep properly and I am emotionally distressed.

—Adolescent boy, Chhattisgarh.

In the aftermath of the pandemic, the prevalence of anxiety and depression among young people increased monumentally. Disruption of mental health services during lockdowns, the widespread impact of school closures, the looming labor market crisis that disproportionately affected young people, the loss of peer interactions, and the loss of physical spaces of support and expression plunged countless adolescents into despair, uncertainty, and a state of hopelessness. Vulnerable young people, especially young girls, those struggling with substance abuse, and those who identify on the LGBTQ spectrum, were at an increased risk. Severe shortage of psychosocial support and affordable and accessible mental health services, alongside stigma around mental health issues (which makes it difficult for adolescents to access information on mental health) and the hesitation and discomfort adolescents experience in terms of opening up to adults about their mental health concerns, made it all the more difficult for them to seek help.

In C3’s initial survey in Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, and Chhattisgarh conducted between April and August, 2020, about a third of the young respondents stated that as a result of the pandemic they were anxious about the financial status of their families; 19% said that their family environment was stressful because of verbal and physical fights at home. Another assessment in late 2020 in two states revealed that about a fourth (23%) of the young respondents felt low, depressed, or hopeless during the COVID-19 pandemic. Four percent had contemplated suicide in the past one year.

In 2021, C3 convened a series of interactions with adolescents to understand their mental health concerns during the pandemic through ‘Mental Health Conclaves’ where both adolescents and other key stakeholders who interact closely with adolescents (teachers, frontline workers, and health service providers) across 12 states of India shared their experiences. A diverse group of adolescents including LGBTQ youth participated in this conversation. It was emphasized that mental health struggles of adolescents are not monolithic and so cannot have monolithic solutions. During these conclaves, the major stressors and triggers for poor mental health that came up were the struggle of coping with online education, isolation from peers during lockdowns, dealing with family pressures, barriers to practicing proper menstrual hygiene, and heightened exposure to social media.

Loss of Agency and Increased Vulnerability to Violence and Discrimination

At home also sometimes, there are fights between mother and father. They fight over things like what will we do when we have shortage of supplies? How will we manage? Mother is also constantly in tension. If coronavirus wasn’t there, I would have earned some money by taking tuition classes.

—Adolescent girl, Maharashtra.

In a cultural context like that of India where women already have limited agency and where their safety and dignity is tenuous, the pandemic further eroded their agency and sense of personhood making them all the more vulnerable to violence and discrimination. Adolescent girls’ choices around their mobility, their future academic or professional prospects, or even marriage, were in jeopardy. It was the family’s financial situation that determined whether an adolescent girl could continue her education, whether she could go out and work, and whether she could spend more time on leisure activities or participate in house work and care work. For example, as per C3’s initial lockdown survey that was conducted in four states between April and August, 2020 showed that deeply entrenched gender roles led to more adolescent girls being thrust into activities like household cleaning (61%), cooking (59%), washing clothes (44%), washing utensils (41%) and taking care of siblings (23%) than adolescent boys (19%, 12%, 17%, 8%, and 17%, respectively). At the same time, due to their family’s dire financial situation, 27% of adolescent girls felt compelled to undertake more income-generating activities during the lockdown rather than to focus on their studies. A higher proportion of boys than girls felt their economic contribution to the household was essential.

At the same time, gender-based violence also increased. It was triggered by both prolonged confinement at home and extreme financial insecurity brought on by the pandemic. In C3’s Lived Realities Survey, women and young girls across nine states unanimously reported an increase in verbal and physical abuse. Anger and frustration of the men in the households were due to job losses, uncertainty around the future, debt, and spending limitations. Lockdowns also made it difficult for victims of such violence to seek help. Not only did they have a mounting burden of household chores to grapple with, they also lost privacy and personal space as all the family members now lived under one roof. Their awareness of crisis helplines was abysmal. Only 36% of the adolescents surveyed between April and August, 2020 knew the correct helpline numbers. Awareness around the use of these helplines was even lower. Only 18% knew that they could be used for reporting domestic violence. Only 22–23% knew that they could also be used for reporting child labor and child trafficking cases.

Adolescent girls’ vulnerability to child marriage was at its peak during the pandemic. While 8% of the adolescents surveyed between April and August, 2020 said that they had heard about instances of child marriage in their neighborhood; 2–3% said that their family members were already planning their marriages. Their chances of getting married early increased. The prevalence of early marriage was higher among young girls compared to young boys.

Support from Government Schemes

These schemes have helped women during the lockdown as women received money in their Jan Dhan account or Ujjwala Yojana and girls who are enrolled in school also received money. So, at this time of crisis, when men have lost their income, women have become the support system for their family. However, it is still the husband or the father who decides how to spend this money.

—Woman respondent, Bihar.

A slew of government schemes was launched during COVID-19 to mitigate its social and economic impact. Hearteningly, awareness around these schemes among adolescents was good. More than half of the adolescents (66%) surveyed between April and August, 2020 said that they were aware of government schemes. Of the adolescents who were aware of these schemes, 69% knew of the Ujjwala Scheme (under which the government provided free gas cylinders), 64% knew about the government’s distribution of subsidized rations scheme, and around 64% knew about the Jan Dhan Scheme which facilitated cash transfers for struggling families. However, despite this, only 43% of the adolescents’ families actually availed the Subsidized Ration Schemes. The proportion availing the Jan Dhan Scheme (35%) and Ujjwala Scheme were even lower. This discrepancy between knowledge and actual access to the schemes was definitely a cause of concern, leaving room for other program and policy-level interventions to bridge this gap.

A similar gap was demonstrated when it came to government-sponsored scholarships and exemption of school fees. While 20% of adolescents knew of these scholarships and 13% knew about fee exemptions, a mere 9% and 4%, respectively could actually avail these schemes.

However, all was not bleak. While, in the first round of this survey only 2% of adolescent girls reported receiving sanitary pads that were initially provided free of cost by government schools, the percentage rose to 28% in the second round of the survey in August 2020. Despite a significant number of adolescent girls continued to access sanitary napkins. There was a two-fold rise in numbers from the first round to the second signalling positive improvement— even if by baby steps.

Responses of Frontline Workers and Teachers

Adults who engage most closely with adolescents beyond adolescents’ immediate families, are local frontline workers and their teachers. Local AWWs, ASHA workers, and ANMs regularly address adolescents’ health needs and are uniquely positioned to support them both physically and emotionally thereby ensuring their overall wellbeing. Teachers too are constantly exposed to the intellectual, cognitive and emotional growth of adolescents. These authority figures and role models can genuinely influence their thinking. Hence, a conversation around the impact of COVID-19 on adolescents is incomplete without hearing from frontline workers and teachers.

Frontline Workers

The true heroes of the pandemic response were the frontline workers (ASHAs, ANMs and AWWs) who work tirelessly, at the risk of their own wellbeing to support communities to battle the virus. In the absence of schools, AWWs took on the mantle of distributing dry rations and food to deprived children and adolescents and also engaged regularly with adolescents to coney information on menstrual hygiene, reproductive health, the importance of IFA tablets and more [7].

Frontline workers were instrumental in ensuring that the regular immunization of children was not hindered during the pandemic. While 96% of frontline workers C3 surveyed in Jharkhand and 78% in Chhattisgarh helped children in receiving vaccinations from their local AWCs, 43% from Chhattisgarh and 36% from Jharkhand did so through a public health centre or a sub-centre in their locality, 12% of the frontline workers reported that children received vaccinations through home visits by ANMs and ASHA workers.

At the same time, their work was fraught with several challenges. Reaching out to the community became difficult due both to lockdown restrictions and a reigning fear of the virus. While 77% reported that the community expressed fear and distrust as they were apprehensive of the frontline workers, being potential carriers of the virus, 40% said that it was difficult for them to directly reach communities as Village Health and Sanitation Days (VHSNDs) were not organized during the initial lockdown period. At the same time, social distancing norms mandated that frontline workers engage with officials, other fellow frontline workers, and the community through online mediums. While 84% were able to use WhatsApp, 30% Zoom and 10% Google Meet, digital literacy around these platforms was still low. Only 24% of frontline workers were comfortable engaging with communities through audio-visual content, 48% were only somewhat comfortable, and 15% were not at all comfortable with conveying health-related information through audio-visual content [7].

Teachers

While the closure of schools significantly affected adolescents, teachers too had to grapple with this tectonic shift in the medium of imparting education. There are lakhs of teachers working in educational institutions all across India. During the pandemic, they had to adjust to a completely new format of teaching— online classes— for which many lacked the resources, access, and some even the skills. Adapting to this new normal coupled with the uncertainty of the pandemic, was something that not only added to the burden of stress that teachers faced, but also anxiety about how they and their students would cope in the future [8].

For better understanding, the impact of the pandemic on formal education from the teachers’ perspective and to gauge their apprehensions and difficulties during this time, C3 reached out to over 1,000 nodal teachers who were assigned to conduct e-learning across three high-burden Indian states—Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Bihar—through a structured survey conducted between April and September, 2020.

During school closure, teachers had to find various alternative ways to connect with students in the absence of physical classes. One such method was mobile messages which were unanimously reported as the most adopted platform for connecting with students during the lockdown across all three states. While 88% of teachers in Chhattisgarh and 87% in Jharkhand took to mobile messaging, the number was a tad lower in Bihar with 73%. Mobile apps like Unnayan and Digi SATH, which enabled an accessible and user-friendly interface for teachers to impart their lessons was widely preferred. Teachers also adopted other virtual platforms such as pre-recorded video/audio classes (46%), Doordarshan /NCERT Swayam Prabha Diksha (57%), and E-pathshala (22%) [8].

However, when it came to formal, structured online classes, the numbers were far from encouraging. Despite being able to connect with their students via mobile messaging, a mere 66% of the teachers in Jharkhand, 53% in Chhattisgarh, and 46% in Bihar were able to fully adopt online classes during the lockdown. Inadequate access to resources such as a reliable internet connection, a personal computer or smartphone of their own were major contributors to such low numbers. A whopping 82% teachers in Bihar and 74% teachers in Jharkhand said that they “did not have access to resources to provide online classes”. The number was slightly lower in Chhattisgarh (32%). Female teachers stated they had to often use their male family members’ phones to conduct online lessons and to engage with students. Others reported that they had to somehow manage with the inadequate resources available to them.

The other major barrier to online classes which was echoed across the board was the lack of skills for remote teaching. More than half (53%) teachers from Bihar, 35% teachers from Jharkhand, and 23% from Chhattisgarh stated that they lacked the adequate skills required for distance teaching and faced difficulties in adapting to this new teaching model which hindered the pace and structure of their classes.

Teachers were also deeply concerned about the long-term effects of school closures with 72% of them fearing school drop-outs of children from poor households, and 57% fearing drop-outs from children who did not have parents. Around 3/4ths of the teachers surveyed said that children were likely to drop-out of school due to financial problems.

At the same time, almost 54% of the teachers (31% in Chhattisgarh; 67% in Bihar; and 55% in Jharkhand) feared that the challenges in adapting to online learning might ultimately lead to lower learning outcomes among students i.e. that they would no longer receive the quality of education that is necessary for their continued growth.

Recommendations

As we near the completion of two whole years of living with the pandemic, the questions that bear repeating are: How do we rebuild? How do we ensure that the damage done by the pandemic does not leave permanent stress? How do we ensure that adolescents’ lives and futures are not completely jeopardized? How do we offer support at policy, programmatic, community, and personal levels? How do we envision recovery?

Ensuring Access to Education

In the absence of schools and opportunities for one-on-one learning, we need to develop alternate strategies for young people to engage with their peers and with the larger community and have access to informal opportunities for learning and psychosocial development. Mobilizing existing resources to develop remedial courses that can be delivered through peer learning, blended solutions that provide education specific to the learner’s context while at the same time, leveraging both hi-tech (digital mediums), low-tech (simple SMS and phone calls), and no-tech (governance structures like school management committees, teachers’ groups, parents’ groups and gram sabhas) modes for continued learning, is the need of the hour. At the same time, designing these learning methods without taking into account the diverse and unique challenges children, parents, and teachers face would be counterproductive.

Once schools begin to reopen, priorities must shift to reintegrating students and teachers into the school setting and ensuring that students actually return to schools and do not drop-out indefinitely. This could be a challenge, given the time and effort both teachers and students will require to readjust to school settings given that a significant number of students might have already dropped out either due to early marriage or familial pressure. However, re-enrolment campaigns for students, professional development workshops for teachers, participatory community action, financial and non-financial incentives (through mid-day meals programs, direct cash transfers, and conditional cash transfers etc.) could go a long way in achieving this. School management committees, elected representatives of Panchayati Raj Institutions, Bal Sansads, and Self-help Groups can play an important role in monitoring and facilitating community-level efforts for preventing drop-outs and ensuring school attendance. At risk youth—those in financially vulnerable situations and those who fell prey to substance abuse or patriarchal policing need to be given extra care and support through tailored interventions such as part-time school, night school, etc.

At the same time, gaps in gendered inclusion in education due to the massive digital divide cannot be ignored. Girls cannot be left out simply because they cannot access a smartphone or the internet. An inclusive model for classes must be adopted. And alternate mediums like pre-recorded lessons through television broadcasts need to be leveraged. Additionally, digital access itself needs to be bolstered. Providing better and accessible digital facilities in educational institutions, building infrastructure, increasing machine-to-student rations, and digital upskilling programs for girls along with uninterrupted internet connectivity are the bare minimum amenities that must be made available to young girls. However, efforts to bridge the gendered digital education gap do not end at just providing connectivity. Digital educational content support, meaningful training on digital literacy and safety and digital-based curricula in schools and colleges can not only enhance girls’ knowledge, but can also provide them pathways to build their future careers based on this knowledge. Digital libraries can be helpful for those who do not attend school. This should include young girls’ exposure to digital spaces at the community level.

Addressing Safety and Violence

First and foremost, there needs to be greater community-level awareness on gender-based violence, including physical abuse, emotional abuse, and sexual abuse as well as awareness of legal provisions and rights of victims of abuse and resources for seeking help. In all this, the contribution of ASHAs, womens’ self-help groups, as well as local women panchayat leaders, can be helpful. Under government-run programs like the Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram (RKSK), these stakeholders can play a key role in keeping a vigilant eye on issues of violence, early marriage, school drop-outs, and trafficking. Since their daily responsibilities already involve going door-to-door in their communities, they can monitor vulnerable households for warning signs and engage directly with the community to challenge stigma and misinformation about domestic violence. They can also engage with District Child Protection Units (DCPU) to identify and support adolescents at risk of early marriage. Most importantly, they need to be equipped with adequate training not only in legal procedures, but also in interpersonal counseling. At the same time, young girls need to be aware of and have access to crisis helplines and information and counseling support. Local ASHA workers, teachers, or Kishori Samooh can organize at least one internet-enabled mobile phone in each village which girls can use to contact crisis helplines in a safe and private manner.

Access to Health Services

Despite closures and lockdowns, both in-school and out-of-school girls and college-going adolescent girls should continue receiving essential health products like sanitary napkins, iron and folic acid (IFA) tablets, and supplementary nutrition through the Rajiv Gandhi Scheme for Empowerment of Adolescent Girls (RGSEAG) and RKSK. Sanitary napkins and IFA supplements should qualify as essential services with a provision for home delivery of these products.

Making adolescent-friendly counseling available over the phone where adolescents can voice their physical, reproductive, and menstrual health concerns to medical professionals is equally necessary. Even when adolescents are confined to their homes, they should not lose their safe spaces. Nor should they lose access to essential health services. In C3’s intervention areas in Jharkhand, this form of telephone counseling is being facilitated at the community-level and an overwhelming majority of adolescents are availing this service, highlighting just how essential it is.

Health and Wellness Centres (HWCs) within communities can also be positioned as overall ‘Wellness Centres’ that address both the physical and mental wellbeing of adolescents. It is critical to sensitize primary health care teams at these centres so that they understand the specific needs of adolescents and are equipped to work with them.

Access to Peer Interactions

One of the most significant adverse consequences of the pandemic on adolescents was the gaping lack of physical peer interaction. Adolescence is a foundational period when the social environment is important for crucial brain development, self-concept construction as well as mental health. Adolescents’ use of digital technologies and social media mitigates some of the negative effects of physical distancing. It is important to offer virtual forums to adolescents by creating opportunities for them to connect with their peers and share their mental struggles during difficult times. Small-scale use of issue-based online discussions in C3’s project areas in Chhattisgarh demonstrated that adolescents are keen to interact and to connect. Isolation devastated adolescents during a time when they are craving human connection even if virtual or telephonic. There is a need to envision such virtual interactions on a larger scale and to simultaneously keep in mind the safety and privacy concerns that arise with internet communications.

Support for Mental Health Needs

Given that a large number of vulnerable adolescents lack access to formal mechanisms for mental health support, there is a need to recognize and promote community-based psychosocial support to address their mental health needs. Adequate resources (financial and human) must be allocated to ensure proper and equitable provision of psychosocial support and services including helplines, social media, apps, and other digital platforms that offer support and telemedicine guidance and support to victims of violence.

Most importantly, there is a need to sensitize not just adolescents, but also families and communities to recognize when someone is experiencing mental distress and understand the importance of seeking help for such distress. Until we break the larger stigma around mental health and make formal channels of mental healthcare affordable and easily available, we cannot adequately address the mental health needs of adolescents.

Conclusion

Young people are the future of the country. They are the ones who will determine social and economic development in the coming years. Therefore, ensuring their health and wellbeing is not just a key individual need, but is fundamental for the nation’s progress. With the pandemic causing massive disruptions in the lives of adolescents, it is crucial now more than ever before to come together to understand their specific needs and experiences and counter the barriers that are threatening their future.