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Whether it’s because of concerns about the virus, social pressure, shyness or acne, some kids are reluctant to take off their masks. (Golden Cosmos/The New York Times)
WHETHER IT’S VIRUS CONCERNS, PEER PRESSURE, SHYNESS, OR ACNE, SOME GUYS ARE RESISTANT TO REMOVING THEIR MASK.
For Belle Lapos, high school has been strange. Her first year began in 2020 with a mix of learning from home and in-person classes in Stillwater, Minnesota. Now that she is a sophomore, she has been attending school full time for months, with everyone wearing a mask. So a few weeks ago, when her school removed the mandatory use of these as protection against COVID-19, she and her friends had a lot to take in.
They worried that they would be considered less attractive; they were worried about acne that had worsened with the mask, getting sick or making their family members sick; they worried whether or not using it might identify them with certain political beliefs.
In the end, 16-year-old Belle and her friends decided not to remove their masks for the time being, “not because of their views on the pandemic, but more than anything because of their views on themselves and how they think people are going to judge them.” Belle stated. “Seeing only half of someone’s face for two years straight and then completely uncovering it is like saying, ‘Ah, this is my face’…it’s a lot to digest.”
Adolescence has long been defined by insecurities about body image, social pressure to conform, a growing sense of identity, and a susceptibility to social anxiety. As school districts across the United States stop requiring the use of masks, many teens have mixed feelings, like Belle and her friends.
Even when the obligation to wear a mask is lifted, peer pressure and ongoing disagreements about whether or not to wear a face covering spark new anxieties for some teens. Experts say that understanding what young people are experiencing emotionally can help parents and children cope with the transition.
“At this stage of development, a change in the way you present yourself is very significant,” said Sophia Choukas-Bradley, a clinical psychologist and director of the Adolescent and Young Adult Laboratory at the University of Delaware in Newark. “Of course, this transition is to be expected to be difficult.”
FEARS ABOUT COVID-19 CONTINUE
For two years, the pandemic has raised concerns about the mental health of adolescents. Rates of suicidal thoughts in teens have soared during the pandemic, as high as 25 percent even last summer, and some estimates suggest levels of depression and anxiety have doubled among teens.
Many are still afraid of getting sick as COVID-19 continues to circulate. Although severe cases are less common in adolescents than in adultsMore than 116,000 children under the age of 18 have been hospitalized from COVID-19 in the United States as of March 12, while just under 60 percent of teens are fully vaccinated.
On a Sunday afternoon last week, the day before New York City children were allowed to go to school without masks, 15-year-old Charlie Staub raised concerns about safety issues. Not all the windows open at his school and the ventilation didn’t seem very good in the building. Although he is vaccinated and became ill with COVID-19 in December, the thought that suddenly everyone will stop wearing masks made him nervous.
He and his friends planned to continue wearing masks, at least at first. “If nothing really happens, then I think we could take it off, but for now, I feel more comfortable when I have it on.”
THE IMAGINARY PUBLIC
Removing the mask also represents a social transition during a developmental period in which young people become hypersensitive to what others think of them and become especially concerned with their appearance, Choukas-Bradley explained, noting that beginning in pre-adolescence And in their early teens, kids often develop what psychologists call an “imaginary audience” that makes them feel like there’s a spotlight on them and their shortcomings. As they start spending less time with their parents and more time with peers, social status and cultural standards of beauty become very important, especially for girls, she explained.
Imaginary audiences determine how teens think about even ordinary tasks like getting dressed, talking in class or shopping for shoes, said Seth Pollak, a psychologist and director of the Child Emotion Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. While an adult might think about cost or comfort, a teen is focused on what certain people at school are going to think when they walk into the room with the new shoes. Those people are not necessarily her friends; they can even be enemies.
“These audiences in the minds of some teenagers dominate their lives so much that they think they really do pay a lot of attention and analyze them,” Pollak said.
Many studies show that social media has only exacerbated teens’ fixation on their appearance and concerns about being judged. Even before the pandemic, teens worried about looking attractive on social media, according to Choukas-Bradley, whose research has linked such concerns to an elevated risk of depression.
In addition, the consequences of wearing or not wearing a mask are also magnified on social platforms. “The mask hoax,” the idea that someone might be hiding facial flaws behind a mask emerged on dating apps but trended on TikTok late last year. Many recent videos featuring young people pointing out kids at their schools who might be wearing masks to hide their faces, and even asking others to rate their own faces, have amassed tens of millions of views.
“The imaginary audience stopped being imaginary,” Choukas-Bradley said. “At any time, I can be photographed or videotaped, and my peers can see what I’m doing and what I look like.”
This isn’t the first internet phenomenon to rate people by their physical appearance, said Hannah Schacter, a developmental psychologist at Wayne State University in Detroit. These kinds of tendencies can add to the pain and sense of being judged that teens already feel when their peers find them unattractive.
“The mask deception is concerning because it can expose teens to embarrassment or humiliation, especially when their peers make negative judgments about how they look without a mask,” Schacter said. “They may feel like they are opening themselves up to unwanted scrutiny from their peers after two years of being in hiding.”
WHAT CAREGIVERS NEED TO KNOW
For kids worried about getting COVID-19, Schacter suggested that parents talk honestly about their concerns to help guide their decisions. “At the end of the day, the most important thing is that students feel safe and comfortable when they are at school,” he said.
In places where COVID-19 rates are low and masks are becoming optional, it can be tempting to tell teens that nobody cares what they look like and they shouldn’t worry about taking their masks off for image reasons, he explained. Choukas-Bradley; but a better strategy is to validate their feelings. Ask them what they think. Pay attention to emotions rather than details, and then identify the feeling: It sounds like you’re anxious or self-conscious. Teens are primed for intense emotions, Choukas-Bradley said, so what seems overly dramatic to parents is normal for them.
Schacter suggested reminding them that their peers are going through the same thing and encouraging them to talk to their friends. Teens often think they’re the only ones experiencing things no one else can understand, but in her research with teens exposed to social stressors like bullying, Schacter found that they feel less isolated about their fears and worries when they meet peers and friends who have been through something similar.
Schacter recommended that when parents talk to teens, they say something like, “Even if your friends or classmates don’t seem stressed about going back to life without a mask, chances are many of them are quietly experiencing similar anxieties.” .
If you’re a parent or caregiver and your teen’s anxiety is so severe that it interferes with their daily routine, contact a mental health professional, Schacter added.
Pollak noted that parents can ease their own worries by recognizing that a little stress, adversity and even embarrassment can benefit a child’s development. Teenagers have always had to go to school with new braces, glasses, pimples, haircuts, and changing bodies. He stated that when they don’t get picked for the teams and clubs they want to be a part of, they can build their resilience and be successful in the long run.
“Masks represent a change,” Pollak said. “But is it really that different from a lot of things that teenagers have always been concerned about?”
For people of any age, research suggests that facilitating change can reduce anxiety through exposure.
Although Charlie, the 15-year-old from New York City, was concerned about safety with the removal of mandatory face coverings at school, some of his friends felt self-conscious. They’re sophomores now, starting high school during the pandemic, and they haven’t really seen the faces of many of their classmates, except maybe at lunchtime. “When you have to break a social norm, it’s like opening a door you’ve never walked through, and that’s scary,” he said.
Charlie expected those wearing masks to gather in groups, but was surprised to see how many people were not wearing masks when he arrived at school Monday morning. By the third hour, he had already removed his mask and was amazed at how refreshing he felt. “It’s like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders, and I’m looking forward to tomorrow,” he said.
Still, his plan for that Tuesday was to keep the mask in his pocket, just in case.