People in their 20s are now disproportionately represented in new COVID-19 cases in Ontario.

Instead of shaming & blaming, I asked them what challenges they’re currently facing with respect to the pandemic.

After 100s of replies, some key themes emerged. Here they are:

Many people in their 20s mentioned peer and social pressure, plus general difficulty navigating behaviours of those around them as a major challenge during the pandemic.

Difficulty seeing or isolating from family was cited as a key challenge folks in their 20s are facing.

This one is big given data from France suggesting cases in young people eventually spread to older folks in 3-5 weeks.

Unsurprisingly, school was another major challenge people in their 20s are facing that’s forcing them to be non-compliant to general safety guidelines.

This applies to those who are students and teachers.

Many people in their 20s live in shared housing, meaning it’s hard to maintain a bubble or truly limit their close contacts.

Loneliness & mental health was another major challenge folks in their 20s are facing during the pandemic.

Contrary to popular belief that 20-somethings are reckless, quite a few replies they’ve had next to no physical contact the last 6 months, which is quite worrisome tbh.

Money and the need to work is a key driver in any demographic, but the people in their 20s I asked self-report added challenges of unsafe and unregulated workplaces with little job security.

Some less frequent but still important mentions for challenges faced by people in their 20s: dating, fatigue & frustration, confusion on public health guidelines, and transportation.

This wasn’t a scientific survey, but I hope these anecdotes help ppl rethink their assumptions about COVID spread amongst 20-somethings.

And importantly, to redirect our rage where it belongs: at government & public health officials making contradictory & confusing guidelines.

Also sorry the graphics are quality. Believe it or not they took me 2 hours because Instagram limits how you can share replies so I had to save multiple copies of the same jpeg over and over. But hopefully you get the gist!

PS. If you do actual research on this topic, please DM me!

A lot of journalists are now reaching out and I'd love to connect them with people doing real studies on this!