It’s been five years since Covid ripped through Australia, and the world, but only now we’re seeing the long-term impacts of placing our children into isolation.
It was all in the name of saving lives. The nation locked inside their homes, isolated for long stretches of time, with everyday interactions largely limited to social media.
But what was the true cost of locking down Australian children during the Covid-19 pandemic?
The Advertiser’s four-part docu-series, Lockdown Kids: How To Break a Generation, delves into how the nation’s children are faring five years since Covid ripped through the country.
Each episode deeply explores Australia’s troubling youth mental health crisis, including startling spikes in anxiety and anorexia. A 10-year low in school attendance rates and the widespread rise of social media-fuelled youth crime.
Combining interviews with concerned parents, troubled children and the world’s top experts and thought leaders, each episode explores the true sustained impacts that the country’s lockdown kids are facing today.
Crippling anxiety crisis
WATCH EPISODE 1 BELOW NOW
With almost four in ten high school students struggling with anxiety, and suicide now the leading cause of death for young Australians, this episode shines a light on the country’s crippling youth mental health crisis. Young Australians detail the mental toil they’re still combating after life in lockdown.
EPISODE 1 STORIES
• ‘Never got easier’: The Aussie kids still battling post-lockdown anxiety
• ‘I rang and rang’: Family’s stark warning over daughter’s death
Battling school refusal
WATCH EPISODE 2 BELOW NOW
With attendance rates plummeting, half a million students failing to attend school full time, and 80,000 children who have vanished from the education system, the first episode of Lockdown Kids shares the real life stories of parents and children struggling with school refusal, with top experts sharing how to spot and combat the issue.
EPISODE 2 STORIES
• Heartbreaking reason why 483k Aussie kids are skipping school
• ‘My kids haven’t been back to school since the Covid lockdowns’
Rising anorexia battle
WATCH EPISODE 3 BELOW
Social media dependency, isolation from peers and long days with little to do created the “perfect storm” for a rise in eating disorders in Australia. This episode features Robb Evans detailing losing his daughter, and a teenager who was gripped by anorexia after watching TikToks in lockdown.
EPISODE 3 STORIES
•‘I got anorexia from watching TikTok videos on how to get fit’
•Tragic death at 15 after refusing to eat for nine months
•‘Girls are dying’:Ten years to fix rise in anorexia in Australian teens
Social media crime wave
WATCH EPISODE 4 BELOW
Delving into the rise of ‘boasting and posting’ youth crime, this episode looks at how anti-social behaviour in teenagers is on the rise and how social media dependency in lockdown is largely to blame. Here we’ll hear two sides of the story; the father whose son was killed by a joy-rider; and reformed teen criminals detailing why they turned to crime.
EPISODE 4 STORIES
•‘My son’s death was blasted on social media’
•‘Pulled a knife on a family’: Teen crim on sick social media trend
• Mapped: The worst youth crime hotspots in Australia revealed
Watch the moment lifeless man yanked from burning wreckage
I was hit by a car going 170km/h and survived. No doubt about it, I should probably be dead. But after I was left unconscious, burning, trapped and helpless, something incredible happened, writes Advertiser journalist Ben Hyde.
‘I’m Afghan and feel pride every time I put on my Aussie uniform’
Kbora Ali’s dad was rescued from the Timor Sea by the Royal Australian Navy on his journey to escape persecution. Now, she is committed to serving the country that saved her family.