The Kids Aren’t Okay. Grandma and Grandpa Aren’t Either.

 The Kids Aren’t Okay. Grandma and Grandpa Aren’t Either.

If you think Covid just affected school schedules and Zoom calls, think again. The pandemic rewrote the rules of childhood, adolescence, and even old age—and we’re still living with the fallout.

During lockdowns, kids were handed tablets like lifelines. Learning, socializing, even emotional development was mediated through a screen. “Don’t talk to grown-ups,” we were told, “or you’ll get sick.” Grandparents couldn’t babysit—they were too vulnerable. And in a bid to keep everyone alive, we isolated an entire generation from real human connection.

Now, post-pandemic, the consequences are stark. Kids are glued to screens for hours, sometimes days. Anxiety, depression, and digital dependency have skyrocketed. But the story doesn’t stop with them. Grandma and Grandpa, once the safety net, are now navigating a world of endless notifications, endless scrolling, and constant digital chatter. Three screens in the living room, tablets at mealtime, phones in hand during conversations—they, too, are trapped.

Addiction isn’t just about drugs. It’s about patterns, behaviors, and coping mechanisms that spiral out of control. And Covid made all of us experiment with new addictions—sometimes out of survival, sometimes out of boredom, sometimes out of sheer necessity.

Mental health has plummeted. Kids, elders, caregivers, teachers—they’re all paying the price for lessons learned through pixels instead of hugs, for social distancing that replaced empathy with isolation, and for survival strategies that left emotional scars we’re only now beginning to see.

We need to ask ourselves: how do we reclaim connection? How do we teach resilience without screens? How do we help those who’ve been socially, emotionally, and digitally abandoned?

Because right now, the kids aren’t okay—and neither are Grandma and Grandpa.