Five Years On 

It’s been five years since COVID-19 wreaked havoc with our lives, when terms like “lockdown” and “shelter in place” entered our lexicon, when Zoom became our link to the outside, when a staggering number of friends and loved ones lay dying alone in isolated hospital wards. Nothing, it seemed, would ever be the same.

At the time, we asked experts in a variety of fields to make sense of our new reality. Five years later, as we’ve settled into a new normal, we’re circling back with another reality check: Did the world indeed change?
And did we?

By Mishpacha contributors

Coordinated by Michal Frischman

5 YEARS ON / Childrens’ Technology

Our Job Will Only Get Tougher

Dr. Eli Shapiro

For parents and for schools, managing technology is an all-encompassing, never-ending task. But it is the challenge of our generation. And that challenge has only been sharpened by our experience of Covid.

As I wrote in Mishpacha back in May 2020, both the following statements are true: Technology is good. Technology is bad.

This conundrum was accentuated by the sudden school closures in March 2020, which created many academic and social challenges for educators, parents, and students. Many schools shifted to screen-based platforms to provide some semblance of educational continuity. For many, this presented a significant concern around screen use and its impact on overall functioning.

I wrote in my article then that although the use of screens was not ideal, it presented a reasonable solution for an extraordinary and unprecedented challenge. Based on the research, children’s overall resilience would allow them to bounce back after they returned to school without experiencing long-term, clinically significant consequences of the excessive screen use.