1

With such variability within individuals’ subjective experiences, how do people make important decisions? This question is more pertinent than ever because we are amid a pandemic. Decisions we relegated to automatic processing, such as how often you leave the house and what time we get groceries, require more mental energy to process. We cannot simply just leave and go about our life, as a collective whole we have had to adjust our behaviors to limit the spread of the Coronavirus. While most adults in the general population can accomplish that with little to no difficulty. There is a cohort that may be getting overlooked throughout this whole pandemic, that is Generation Z. Furthermore this extra energy requirement needed to regulate our behaviors may seem subtle, but as the days turn into weeks and the weeks into months. This subtle change is slowly exhausting mental functioning (“quarantine fatigue”), while this problem may not seem substantial, that’s the point, the slow drip of our mental reserves isn’t noticeable until we’re out. Although no one really has experience with this kind of stressor, adults have the upper hand when facing unknown challenging tasks. Through life experience, they have learned how to better manage their stress levels/cognitive load. Due to their limited life experiences, adolescents are then often plagued more intensely with the negative effects of prolonged exposure to stress. Thus, as a result, they have limited mental energy in their reserve to delegate towards upholding Covid protocols. However, we can combat this mismanagement by using language and individuals’ personal narrative to balance the scales and alleviate some of this stress.

To understand the consequences of this prolonged stress Amanda Timler and colleagues discovered a few common conditions in which they saw the atrophy of the prefrontal cortex. This is important because the prefrontal cortex is thought to be one of many biological parts that play a role in decision-making. Some of the common conditions in which they saw reduced functioning were loneliness and feelings of isolation (Timler, McIntyre, Rose, & Hands, 2019). As you can imagine these conditions affect more people now that we are amid a quarantine. As of now, individuals have been subjected to these conditions for over 6 months and thus it is very likely that we can already see deficits in prefrontal cortex functioning. If you don’t believe me just take a second to think about your cognitive functioning throughout your day. Take a moment and answer this question; Has it been getting harder and harder to maintain your focus on an important Zoom call? If you’re like many others then the answer to that question would be yes. This should show you that your Executive Functioning is starting to decline and means, not only will your attention suffer but your creativity and inhibition too. This is especially important for my population of focus, adolescents. Adolescents are in a place in their life where they are continually constructing their narratives based on their competencies. One such category that has a major influence on competency is that of Scholastic competency (Piaget). Hence if Executive function suffers, attention suffers and if attention suffers, scholastic performance suffers. This will lead adolescents to perceive their competency as lower than what it truly is, ultimately skewing their perception of their agency/identity.