Allie Bernstein, '27
The year 2020 was four years ago. Moving forward, we will likely never experience a year as historically important as 2020. In these past couple of months, multiple media sources have explored the idea of “The 2020 Effect”. This specific idea does not stem from how Covid-19 affected policies and guidelines of businesses and systems in America, but overall, how the socioeconomic status of the world was affected.
The definition of socioeconomic is, “Relating to or concerned with the interaction of social and economic factors.” It is known that the year 2020 caused many individuals to lose money and jobs to the pandemic, but when discussing The 2020 Effect, there is more emphasis on social factors. This can look like exploring the topics of school, social media, relationships, humor, and an overall social view.
Aside from the global pandemic that took place, there were many other defining events. George Floyd was killed, Donald Trump was impeached and then acquitted, Joe Biden won the presidential election, Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away, Australia was devastated by brushfires, global warming caused Antarctica to reach its highest point in temperature, and Beirut suffered from a major explosion. These are just a handful of the notable stories that took place. All of these events changed humanity’s perspective on the world and how we go about every day decisions.
So, how were we socially affected? 2020 made our lives become extremely politicized. If two people didn’t vote for the same president and didn’t belong to the same political party, it would be safe to say it would be unlikely they would be very good friends. Before 2020, people didn’t seem to internalize politics as much as they do now. Additionally, the pandemic caused younger people to be isolated from one another. A select group of students at Ensworth filled out a survey about their experience with the year 2020. Here are some of the responses:
When asked, would you rather live in a pre-2020 year, or the year we live in now? 75% of students answered with a pre-2020 year.
When asked, how many of these social media apps did you use before the year 2020? 37.5% answered with Tiktok (which was then called Musically), 12.5% answered with Instagram and Snapchat, and 100% answered with Youtube.
The follow up question being how many of these social media apps did you use after the year 2020?
75% said Tiktok, 100% said Instagram, and 87.5% said Youtube.
The last question asked was how do you think 2020 affected your day to day life? One anonymous response truly stood out. “2020, Covid, and quarantine made people very attached to social media, which brought more people to the apps, especially the younger generations. Social media can be a good thing, but it can also negatively impact people by only showing the positive days of people's lives. I think 2020 affected my daily life by making me want to live up to the highlight reels on social media, because it is now such a big part of our world.”
For the younger generation, the politics of 2020 didn’t seem to have a deep effect, but social media seemed to have more of a grip. Multiple responses to the survey talked about using technology more due to not being able to interact with people. Now in their day to day life, they’re feeling reliant on the same technology. Overall, the major events and isolation that every person had to endure in 2020 seemed to be overwhelming and life changing. The 2020 effect is an interesting topic to explore, as it brings up the question of whether or not we, as a society, can do damage control. While our world has been permanently altered, that doesn’t mean any of us as individuals have to be changed too.