Teen Lives, Interrupted by COVID

Young New Yorkers grapple with the pandemic’s mental toll.

Photographs by Elinor Carucci, THE NEW YORKER, Photo Booth

February 14, 2022

If you are seventeen years old, roughly a third of your adolescence and almost all of your high-school career have been lived under the shadow of covid-19. You may have been sick or lost family members; perhaps you have feared being a vector of infection to vulnerable loved ones. Your schooling has almost certainly suffered, and your social life has been curtailed. Granted, these years were never going to be easy. Even before the coronavirus was first detected in the U.S., in January, 2020, more than one in three high-school students in the country reported persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness. The rate of suicide among those from the ages of ten to twenty-four had increased nearly sixty per cent in little more than a decade. These trends have only worsened during the pandemic, the stresses of which have added to preëxisting structural inequities. Last fall, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Children’s Hospital Association together declared a national emergency in the area of child and adolescent mental health.

Elinor Carucci is a photographer and a mother of seventeen-year-old twins named Eden and Emmanuelle. She recently took photos of her kids and other young New Yorkers between the ages of fifteen and eighteen, most of them in the places where they have spent inordinate amounts of time over the past two years: their bedrooms. Many of the rooms are decorated with posters and other personal paraphernalia, and equipped with narrow twin beds and windows that, as is often the case in the smallest rooms of a New York City apartment, look out onto airshafts. These are the reduced worlds of young people whose existences have, in a literal sense, been decimated by the pandemic—at least a tenth of their lives thus far sacrificed to its ravages and restrictions.

—Rebecca Mead

Madeline Hill, 17

During [the height of] covid, I didn’t come downstairs unless I had to go to the kitchen to eat. I didn’t take showers, or really use the bathroom, unless I really needed to. I kind of just lived in my own filth. I was a little bit of a robot. I didn’t really eat or sleep or drink of my own volition, but I did homework. We are in this state of: You just put all these live shrimp into a boiling pot, and you just expected them to hang in there, and wait for the finished product. But they are in this pot and they’re squirming in there, and they have no idea what’s going on. We’re really struggling, and your issues are our issues now. Things that were once not a thought, or an afterthought, or maybe just a blip in somebody else’s existence, are now my existence.

Alicia Barton, 18

I remember for a while thinking, If I talk to friends, it will be fine. But eventually I found myself not talking to anyone, just being in my room the whole day. For some reason, talking to people on FaceTime or Zoom, you’re even lonelier. My school is right next to my house—I can see it out of my window. I never thought I would be, “Oh, my God, I want to go back. I miss my school.” When we did go back, a lot of my friendships kind of shifted. I thought that was going to be my little piece of normalcy, and it wasn’t. I think I’ve become maybe less of a social person. During lunch, it’s two people per table, and, when you’re done, put your mask up. And if by chance you don’t have someone to sit with one day?

Tobias Irikura, 17

Playing the cello is something that I took great comfort in. I played Bach almost exclusively. When I felt like the world was falling apart—that I wasn’t really good at anything—it was nice to remember that I’m actually really good at something. I grew up listening to exclusively classical music until the age of about twelve, and there was a time where I just completely abandoned that, and I found new things, which is nice. But to come back to that very kind of serene beauty that the cello held, that I held with the cello, was extraordinary and beautiful.

Zoë Dalzell-Sexton, 17

I thought it would all get better—and then both my parents got covid. It was near midterms, and I was so overwhelmed. My sister and I had to take care of the dog, do shopping for our parents, and cook for ourselves. I felt, Why would I even be doing work right now when, like, I have so many other things to worry about? And then I would be late on these assignments that are really important to me, and that would make me stress more. Really, no work got done for an entire year. The experience put a damper on how much I think I can do. I know that I don’t work well in isolation, or under pressure, or with large assignments—which is kind of, like, all of life. So that’s a little heartbreaking.

Jackson Chang, 15

The pandemic was really poorly timed, since this was around when I was turning into a teen-ager and developing who I was. So I come into eighth grade, not really knowing who I am, who my friends are. I didn’t really know what was going through my mind—I was in a limbo, shell state. By ninth grade, I realized that I kind of forgot how to socialize with new people. A lot of the time, I lounge around in my room and kind of just stare at my computer. There will always be, like, a YouTube video on, or I’ll be playing a game some of the time. But otherwise it really does feel like nothing—I will just randomly be staring at my screen. Some of my favorite moments are when it’s 1 a.m., I am alone in the room, and I am just sitting there quietly, doing whatever I am doing. At school, I am part of the robotics team, and that’s been nice—seeing it all come together and work. A lot of the time, there’s a lot of conflict and a good amount of arguing, actually. But, once we put the robot down, and it works, it is pretty relieving and exciting.

Emmanuelle Bendheim, 17

Pictured with her twin brother, Eden

When you live in an apartment, you’re stuck with the noises that people make. When I close my door, I can still hear everything that’s going on. I’m stuck in this house with people who I don’t hate but I don’t always want to be around. I have a fire escape outside my bedroom, and it’s one of my favorite places on the planet. There is this view of some buildings, not skyscraper views but the part of New York that I like—buildings that people actually live in. And there are really dramatic sunsets in the summer. It was the closest I got to exploring. I would get dressed up to go nowhere, so I started to take pictures of myself. I learned how I’d like to look in pictures. It’s very symbolic of the pandemic, because a lot of people just had to look inside of themselves. This stereotype of a self-journey is, like, doing a bunch of things. I did it just stuck inside my brain.

Joeli Valerio, 18

I started to dread things. Going outside was scary. I began spending more time in my room alone, sleeping a lot. It started becoming a cycle. It felt like a pain in the chest. Nothing was relieving it, especially sleep. I would go in my room for hours, and my mom would wake me up to eat. I share a room with three other people, and it was really chaotic. I have a little brother, and I had to help him every day with homework, so it was more and more on my back. My mom and my grandpa said I should take afternoon walks, and I began to walk with my mom. Before, I’d only be looking outside the window, and since my windows have child guards on them you can’t see anything. I was taking a poetry class, and I wrote a poem about how I felt like I was stuck in a coffin—so trapped and overwhelmed. The person I was before and after—I am completely different. Before covid, when I would express myself to others, they would kind of demean it, or laugh. I joined group therapy, and we talked about how sensitivity is a strength, rather than a weakness. I think everybody should know that.