The emotional effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on children: what the first two months without a mask mandate in NYC public schools has taught us

On any given weekday afternoon from the hours of 3:00–4:00pm, you can expect to find New York City streets dominated by teenagers. They bump into the people around them with bulky backpacks as they look to one another for validation, lacking spatial awareness in a way that is simultaneously endearing and infuriating. You’ll notice that, unlike most of the adults scurrying past them, many of them wear masks.

Masking has not been required in New York City public schools since Friday, Mar. 7, when Mayor Eric Adams lifted the indoor mask mandate alongside vaccine requirements in gyms, restaurants, and movie theaters (CBS News). Still, masks have remained an integral part of the city kid’s uniform.

Two years after the COVID-19 virus ravaged the city of New York, and one year after the widespread distribution of the vaccine began, New York’s loosening COVID-19 restrictions have been a glimmer of hope. The city that is home to some of America’s most COVID-cautious is allowing its most cherished, precious citizens — children — to shed their masks.

But that transition hasn’t happened all at once. Today’s kids have come of age during COVID-19 times, and grown accustomed to its new normalcy; not to mention, their environment is one that grapples with some serious pandemic PTSD. Given that, when it comes to the road to unmasking, New York City kids have not been on the straight and narrow. Rather, they have been on a roller-coaster ride, one that has jerked them around and left them nauseous.

It’s shown that the emotional effects of the COVID-19 pandemic might be more complicated than they seem, especially where children are involved. Though there has been a ton of coverage on the mental health effects of the pandemic on young people, it mostly touches on the depression people feel from isolation and hopelessness (Medical News Today). There is very little acknowledgement of the relationship children have with their masks; the pieces of fabric that have ruled much of their lives, or at least much of what they remember.

That being said, this relationship isn’t very surface level, and it isn’t one that the average child would yell about from the rooftops. Two eleventh graders at East Side Community School, Shirley and Emely, noticed that when the mask mandate was lifted, many of their peers jumped at the idea of showing off their faces in school.

“I feel like we’ve changed. We’re in eleventh grade now. We did tenth grade all online, and then ninth grade was cut short,” Shirley said. “You got to see people’s faces and you’re just like, ‘Oh.”

“Yeah, like, now you see the little mustaches on the boys,” Emely said, smiling.

That joy they got from seeing their friends’ faces didn’t last for much longer, though. Shortly after the mandate was lifted, and the kids did their long-awaited face reveals, most students put their masks right back on.

Now, roughly 70–80% of students are continuing to wear masks, per Shirley’s estimate. As we talked, the two of them wore their masks below their noses and chins; a fit that they told me was actually quite common for kids at their school.

Research conducted by UNC Chapel Hill has shown that wearing a mask in such a way does little to protect against COVID-19 — so then what would be the point in wearing one at all, especially when they are no longer required?

When asked this question, Emely and Shirley paused. The reasoning they eventually provided me with was simple: it felt too weird not wearing one.

“It was kind of like a given,” said Shirley. “I think it’s 75% a given, 25% because of COVID cases. I feel like people just do it more because they subconsciously feel safer with a mask on.”

A group of ninth graders at Stuyvesant Park High School — Jacob, Jameson, Vin, and Gabby — had similar reflections.

“I think we got really used to not seeing people’s faces,” said Jacob. “When a new environment [high school] was introduced, like new schools, new people, they were all kind of hidden behind the mask. It’s kind of feeding into an environment that we all feel comfortable with.”

Jacob’s observation was met by a sea of voices ringing out in agreement. “I know a lot of people that don’t like taking it off ever,” said Vin. “They’ll be eating outside of school under their mask. Or like, for photos on Instagram, they won’t take it off. Even in their own homes… A lot of people developed subconscious issues.”

Gabby chimed in, pointing out the reduction of those behaviors more recently. “People are kind of starting to take them off more outside of school,” she said. “But still wearing them inside.”

However, the Stuyvesant kids didn’t really seem to care if others around them wore a mask; nor did Emely and Shirley from East Side Community School. Though Vin did express annoyance at unmasked students “coughing everywhere,’ when they came to school unwell, the general attitude towards the mask status of others was indifference.

“There’s more room for people to be comfortable with their choices,” Jameson said of the post-mask mandate school environment. “Like, if you don’t wear a mask, I personally do not care because it’s not my problem.” Once again, the sea of voices rose in agreement.

High school isn’t the only site of this phenomenon. The principal at South Bronx Early College Academy, David Krulwich, noticed something similar in his own middle-school student body, of whom roughly half continue to mask up in school. He saw the mask as serving two purposes amongst students: both as a tool to reduce the spread of COVID-19, and as a safety blanket to hide vulnerable emotions.

“With kids who wear hoodies… they really just want their hood over their head. When you’re a principal who’s used to telling kids to take their hoods down or take their hats off and things like that, you realize there’s some kids who are using it as self-protection. It gives them a little social space if they don’t feel like interacting with other kids,” he said. “And I think there is something similar with the mask, a little bit. There might be some kids who feel more comfortable with it on, now that they’re used to it.”

Isaac, a sixth grader (who, full disclosure, I used to babysit for, along with his little sisters) at Marine Park Middle School, also had a difficult time making the transition. He pointed to his distaste for change as reasoning.

“If you ask my parents they’ll tell you. Even with petty things like getting a new rug, I’m immediately like “No!” A lot of times I eventually like it, but I just have trouble with change, it’s one of the things I struggle with,” he said.

His younger sister, Noa, also admitted that the change was a weird one. As a third grader at P.S. k18, she has spent most of her school experience masked up. However, unlike her brother and many other older kids, Noa eventually felt fine about taking her mask off.

“They’ve been on for so long, it’s time,” she said. “It felt easier to be in class because I could breathe and communicate better.”

This is not to say that mask attachment is limited to older kids, but it does seem like the younger ones have found it easier to part with them. Four year old Anna, the youngest sibling of the family, has never known a life without her mask; but she can’t wait to be done with them regardless. When asked why, she said “Because you don’t get to show your smile.”

Christina Lowe, a parent at P.S. 154, was initially concerned for her eight year-old daughter, Emma, when she heard news of the mandate being lifted.

“She has worn her mask religiously in school since the pandemic,” she said. “She’s really good about masking, so I was wondering if she would be okay if the mask mandate was taken away, and if she would know how to be okay with her face exposed.”

In spite of her worries, her daughter adjusted pretty easily. Just a few days after the mandate was lifted, she was no longer opening the bag of disposable masks her mom put in her backpack for her every morning.

That didn’t change with the recent rise in Omicron cases — driven by the subvariant BA. 2 — (NBC News), according to Christina. Emma’s class has had several outbreaks since the mandate was lifted (Emma herself got it), yet the policy has remained the same.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as it’s been shown that the negative effects of masking on children far outweigh the benefits, especially at this stage in the pandemic (USC Schaeffer). Several educators in the New York City public school system have recognized that, and were excited to see the mask mandate end. Among them were Bonnie Woods, a pre-K teacher at P.S.k315 and Brooke Shmuel, a speech and language pathologist at P.S.68 in the North Bronx.

“It’s a burden, making sure everyone is masked. It’s hard,” Woods said, referring to the 4–5 year olds in her classroom. “They don’t want to be. It’s not natural.”

Though Shmuel initially felt hesitant about the mandate ending, she has since seen its positive impact. Given her job, she is uniquely situated to observe firsthand the impact masks have had on the development of children — specifically in terms of speech, language, and failing to understand social cues.

“One of the most glaring [effects] is that the kids don’t know how to make their speech sounds. They don’t know the difference between their mouths and their tongues,” she said. “I’ve never seen so many speech issues, meaning not being able to produce sounds properly.”

“They’re not even grasping it because they weren’t exposed for two years. Many parents did the best they could, and Zoom school was better than nothing, but it is not like being in person seeing faces and seeing facial expressions,” Brooke said.

This Psychology Today article cited studies showing children have had difficulty recognizing emotional expressions with masks on, in turn impacting their social skills. This is especially prominent in children ages 3–5, who have little experience with their peers and interpreting social situations, largely due to the pandemic.

Months after the mask mandate was lifted, Shmuel has noticed a difference in her students. “The kids are brighter, they’re more talkative. Just lighter, more expressive. Happier,” Shmuel said. “I think the masks coming off have allowed the kids to just come out of their shells.”

Eva Bogaisky, mother of Isaac, Noa, and Anna, also initially felt reluctant to send her kids to school without their masks on.

“It felt like we’d been working so hard to have them wear a mask and then you just suddenly decide like, ‘Okay, let’s stop’, you know, like… what are you doing?” she said.

However, she changed her mind when she spoke to her kids’ doctor about it. “He basically really reassured me,” she said. “He’s sending kids to the hospital with RSV… and dehydration from Hand Foot, and Mouth Disease, or whatever that’s called. That’s been sending them to the hospital. He’s like, ‘I’m not sending any kids to the hospital with COVID-19.”

There are plenty of sound reasons for children to remain unmasked in schools, and the kids that were able to adjust, like Emma and Noa, did so with the same carefree attitude kids almost always have. “Each time I think, ‘Wow, are we even going to be able to do this?’ The kids just do it,” Krulwich said, echoing the sentiments of all the adults interviewed for this story.

But children aren’t a misnomer, and as adults embrace what looks like the new normal of our pandemic, their trauma isn’t being recognized in a way that matters. The combination of being developmentally affected by wearing a mask and, at the same time, forming a bond to it, is one that could lead to problems for the generation of children that we aren’t presently prepared to deal with.

Before we shove all of our negative COVID-19 memories into a safe, lock it, and throw away the key, it’s important to consider those that have experienced their most developmental years during this time period. They do not have the bandwidth to chock it all up to a few bad years, because they spent them soaking up the attitudes and practices of the adults around them.