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Post-COVID social anxiety is real and is affecting students from around the world. 

In our blog post called the ‘Impact of COVID-19 on the Learning and Development of Kids: The Road to Recovery’, we discussed how self-isolation, school closures, and mask-wearing has impacted students’ academic performance, social skills, and other developmental milestones. Although restrictions have since eased up, there are plenty of problems awaiting undergraduates who are about to become young professionals in a post-COVID period. Learning purely online has minimized opportunities for college students to grow, in the absence of internships, extracurricular activities, and other initiatives.

Another major issue is the mental and emotional toll that has come with the pandemic, which has led to social anxiety. For college students, distancing and isolation may have made them feel uncomfortable going outside, turning normal socializing activities into anxiety-provoking ones. In this article, we’ll look at ways college students can overcome post-COVID social anxiety: 

Check on mental well-being

Before anything else, it’s important for young adults to seek diagnosis and treatment for mental health issues by a qualified professional. It’s one thing to feel slightly uncomfortable with the idea of going out into the world again, and another thing to have a medical condition that needs appropriate interventions. Unfortunately, a report on provider shortage by the nonprofit California Health Care Foundation notes that patients in underserved, rural communities struggle to meet physicians. However, many states are looking into allowing nurse practitioners to see patients independently to address this gap.

If you’re struggling to schedule an appointment with a psychiatrist due to the current shortage, you can opt to meet with a nurse practitioner (NPs) instead. According to insights on remote nurse practitioner jobs in Texas, psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners (PMHNPs) undergo specializations in their fieldwork, degree, and examinations so they are licensed to provide mental health care. Some even take additional training for better telehealth services. PMHNPs can treat mental illnesses, prescribe necessary medications, and offer advice to manage social anxiety.

Actively try to talk to others 

One interesting outcome of the pandemic is that the virus can disrupt speaking skills. According to an article on COVID side effects from the science magazine Scientific American, there has been an increase in cases of stuttering, as people with existing stutters worsened while other childhood stutters returned. The inflammatory response of the virus to synaptic connections managed to change brain functions, including speech — which may aggravate nervousness in socializing.

Whether or not you’ve developed a stutter, the pandemic has likely stunted your confidence when it comes to socializing. You may feel rusty when it comes to talking to people, so you tend to avoid conversations. The treatment often prescribed for social anxiety includes experimenting with interactions, even if it’s uncomfortable. You need to expose yourself to your fears so you can prove the situation is not as threatening as you originally thought. By actively trying to talk to others, even just through video calls, you can better re-adjust before heading back to normal university life.

Take time to practice speaking

Many extroverted undergraduate students likely miss avenues for self-expression like theater roles, singing gigs, and the like. This is a problem for shyer, more socially anxious students as well. When they’re not required to participate in class presentations or other forms of public speaking, it’s difficult for them to build the confidence necessary for class discussions and job interviews. Most students know the solution to this problem, however.

In a study on public speaking fears from the University of the West of England, researchers found that many undergraduates want practical support for oral communication. Around 89% are interested in workshops or training sessions and would appreciate these in their curriculum. If you’re a socially anxious college student, you can take this post-pandemic time to study and practice public speaking so you can overcome your fears. Prepare ahead by reading aloud or recording yourself talking on a video camera. This way, you can polish your skills and feel ready the next time you meet someone.

One tool that can support you here is Forbrain, a learning device for improving voice quality, stuttering, reading ability, and more. Check out Forbrain to see how we can help you gain confidence in speaking and socializing.

The COVID-19 pandemic has placed huge pressure on students across the world.

With self-isolation, school closures, mask-wearing, and other restrictions in full force, young people’s development has suffered, affecting their academic achievement, mental health social skills and causing developmental delays.

“Students now risk losing $17 trillion in lifetime earnings in present value, or about 14% of today’s global GDP, because of COVID-19-related school closures and economic shocks,” says the World Economic Forum.

Now that restrictions are easing and the current academic year is coming to a close, it’s vital that we move forward, finding effective ways to address this gap and ensure students of all ages can reach their full potential.

Here at Forbrain, we can help preschoolers, school children and university students fast-track their learning, grow in self-confidence and make up for the lost time. Find out more about our revolutionary product here.

The Global COVID-19 Education Crisis

If you’re a parent, educator, or therapist, you’ll have seen the impact that the pandemic has had on student development and likely seen motivation, social skills, and academic achievement suffer.

Disruptions

During the height of the pandemic, containing the number of new cases was paramount. This led to widespread lockdowns and school closures that kept children and young adults at home and away from learning institutions, outside activities, hobbies, and clubs, and also away from their friends and family.

Although online learning was soon adopted in many countries, the shift to the virtual world meant that children were thrown out of their daily routines and were forced to adapt to a new alternative. Many parents were also working from home, meaning that families were forced to share a restricted space and juggle the multiple responsibilities of running a household.

Children need routines to help them feel safe and develop a sense of self-discipline, so these disruptions turned their worlds upside down. They became less able to focus, more anxious, and struggled to keep up with academic demands. This too applies to university students who, despite their maturity, still need continuity and routine in order to achieve their academic potential.

Mask Wearing

Humans rely heavily on non-verbal communication and body language cues to develop their social skills, understand emotion and learn to recognize and produce sounds effectively.

However, during the height of the pandemic, this was taken away from many of us affecting young people at their most vulnerable stages of development.

“The infants born during the pandemic scored lower, on average, on tests of gross motor, fine motor and communication skills compared with those born before it (both groups were assessed by their parents using an established questionnaire),” says the scientific journal Nature, “It didn’t matter whether their birth parent had been infected with the virus or not; there seemed to be something about the environment of the pandemic itself.”

We could argue that many students spent additional time with their families during the lockdowns and period of the pandemic and would therefore still benefit from one-on-one interactions.

Yet many parents were busy with their own responsibilities, doing their best to juggle home, work, and other tasks. This meant that many children still weren’t able to benefit from the same maskless human interactions as they would in a preschool, school, college, or university setting.

Fear and Anxiety

Understandably, the pandemic placed a huge mental and emotional toll on students of all ages and their families.

These times were like nothing else this generation has experienced before and it was difficult for us all to navigate the uncertainty and fear that we or those we love could catch the virus. This was worsened further if family members or friends contracted the virus, especially if they passed away as a result.

According to Healthy Children, the percentage of emergency hospital visits for mental health rose by a shocking 24% for children aged 5-11 and 31% for older children during 2020 alone.

Lack of access to educational resources

School and university closures also pulled students away from the traditional learning environment and forced them to adapt to home learning or online school, where available.

Although many institutions made the shift to online learning early in the pandemic, there were numerous hiccups along the way.

Mistakes with content, problems with setting up educational platforms, teacher and lecturer availability, and student access all affected the quality of education available, reducing academic achievement as a result.

Children or students from lower-income families, living with disabilities or in less developed countries felt the pressure more as they were often unable to access online learning for financial reasons.

Finally, although there was some provision for preschool children and those in the early years, it was more difficult to access age-appropriate learning which should, ideally, occur in a face-to-face environment.

If these pressures occurred at a critical point in the student’s educational career such as during examination periods, the impact felt was even greater and could potentially affect their future careers and income.

The Road to Recovery

Given the circumstances, it would seem that the future is bleak for students around the world. Developmental delays, social and mental health problems, coordination issues, and failure to achieve academically can have a significant effect on a student’s future for many years to come.

However, there is hope.

By taking control of the situation and investing more heavily in our young people by using advanced technological tools such as Forbrain, strategies that help accelerate learning and development, and supporting mental health issues, we can overcome the challenges and build back better.

Here are some of the most effective ways to do this.

1. Help children transition back to school naturally

Children and young people may find the transition back to school difficult, especially when they have spent so much time in a home environment with the security and protection of their families.

But this isn’t only a problem for minors- even university students may find it hard to readjust to a new routine and experience symptoms of social anxiety or mental health issues as a result.

Here are a few suggestions that parents and educators can use to help

• Consider how best to deal with separation anxiety
• Stay calm and make the transition as reassuring as possible
• Ensure that students have a predictable daily routine with regular times for meals, sleep and study
• Communicate closely with teachers and other parents to ensure the child’s needs are met
• Find resources that can help students become more resilient and reduce their anxiety.
• Trust in the process. Making this adjustment will naturally take time.
• Monitor the students’ developmental milestones and seek help if required
• Contact a mental health professional if worried about anxiety, depression, or behavioral issues

For older students attending university, the transition should be easier although they are still likely to require additional support or access to outside resources. This could include investing in Forbrain, seeking mental health support, and leaning on the university support services where available.

2. Focus on language and communication skills

Although language and communication skills have suffered as a result of the pandemic, these can quickly be recovered or developed more rapidly with the right input. To do so, certain steps should be put into place immediately without pressuring the student to achieve too much too soon.

According to Education Week, focusing on reading skills is essential for pandemic recovery as it helps to boost a child’s vocabulary, expand their self-awareness and knowledge of the world, boost their confidence, and help them improve their verbal language skills.

Wherever possible, reading should be done aloud as it helps to activate language processing skills and verbal skills whilst also boosting comprehension. Using Forbrain can help you achieve this in just 20 minutes per day. Find out more here.

Returning to school or university itself will play a huge part in developing these, which is why it’s so essential that parents and educators ensure a smooth transition as detailed above. This allows them to spend more time in their peer group and grow their skills naturally.

Parents should also ensure that children are spending time interacting with people of all ages. This helps to expose them to the language they wouldn’t normally encounter and expand their vocabulary and social skills even further.

3. Create an education-rich home environment

A student’s home environment is key to their academic success. Therefore, parents who want to enhance their child’s success should take every step possible to ensure that the home meets their educational needs.

This can include:

• Ensuring the home is rich in all types of reaching material. Consider creating a home library, using your local public library, creating a reading nook, and reading together at bedtime.
• Create a quiet and comfortable study area for older students who have homework
• Find educational toys and resources that your child enjoys
• Offer extra support to students if required by hiring a private tutor or being there to answer their questions
• Puzzles are great brain training tools. Include as many of them as you can!
• Use Forbrain to enhance language skills and build focus and confidence

 4. Protect mental health

For an individual to learn effectively and retain the information long-term, they must feel comfortable, confident, and at ease. If they struggle with mental health issues such as anxiety, fear, depression or social anxiety, they’re less likely to learn effectively and could see their problems worsen over time.

 For this reason, parents and students must take mental health matters seriously and encourage the child to share how they are feeling. Only then can you offer them the support they need to overcome any mental health problems.

Make sure you foster an environment of support and love that doesn’t put too much pressure on academic achievement but takes the whole child into consideration. Recovering from the impact of the pandemic can take time, so it’s also important to be patient and take each day as it comes.

You could consider arranging some exciting activities that you can do as a family, setting them achievable goals that can help boost their confidence, and communicating closely with other members of the family and the school or university.

If extra help is required, don’t be afraid to reach out to mental health experts. They can provide the support you and your family need without judgment.

Forbrain has been designed to help support your child’s reading comprehension at every stage of their learning journey. Never has this been more important than now as we move on from the pressures of the pandemic and help students of all ages take their futures into their own hands.

Little Charlie was diagnosed with mixed dyslexia and dysgraphia (the phonological subtype), at the age of 8½.

Throughout Charlie’s schooling years he floated through each year, ‘flying under the raider’. He successfully avoided the tasks he thought were difficult, usually reading and writing, by using his personality, pleasing the teacher, and copying from his peers. He was very clever at implementing strategies to hide the fact that he struggled with literacy activities, both from a confidence perspective and ability.

DSM5 uses the terms Specific Learning Disorder with impairment in reading (315.00) and Specific Learning Disorder with impairment in written expression (315.2) to describe these problems. This did not come as a surprise to his parents as they had been exploring all angles to help support his learning.

Charlie displayed significant resistance to learning activities that involved decoding, reading, and writing. He would very quickly emotionally dysregulate which could be viewed as a combination of anxiety and as an avoidance strategy. Charlie lacked the confidence to complete tasks by himself and often asked for assistance (especially in the classroom setting). He has received a range of interventions in and outside the school setting over the course of his 4 years of schooling, with limited successes. Previous interventions include:

• Phonological Intervention: ‘Crack the Code’ 1:1 program delivered daily in the home by parents with a weekly check-in session with the intervention teacher and parent.
• SLP at approx. 4 y.o due to a speech stutter: minimal intervention was provided and symptoms were monitored.
• Tongue-tie surgery at 7 y.o: often connected to speech issues, attachment/emotional regulation issues.
• Physiotherapy/Exercise Physiologist: assessment of gross motor skills eg. Crossing the midline and primitive reflexes.
• Behavioral Optometrist: no vision or visual processing issues
• 1:1 and Small Group reading intervention: Levelled Literacy Intervention (LLI) 3 x weekly in a school setting.

It wasn’t until Charlie’s learning difficulties were fully understood, through the testing process, that he was able to receive the targeted intervention he really needed. His mum knew about Forbrain and began a home-based intervention, under the guidance of an Educational Counsellor and Level 2 Tomatis Practitioner, Emma White. The method of intervention was:

• Forbrain for approx. 10min/day for an average of 4 days/week.
• Forbrain was worn during a phonological learning intervention and/or guided reading.
• Time period: approximately 3 months

After the period of intervention, the most exciting change reported by mum was that Charlie had developed the confidence to read independently and now chooses to read in his spare time!

He still has a distance to travel to ‘catch up’ with his peers although with his new enthusiasm and improved self-efficacy it will surely be at a faster speed. Mum reported a range of improvements, also observed by the Tomatis practitioner:

• Charlie has improved his reading ability by 2 PM levels (standardized testing system utilized in Australia to gauge reading ability) within the reading program utilized at his school
• Charlie is voluntarily choosing to read books in his leisure time: he is excited to get to the end of a book as he is now able to enjoy the story, not just ‘read the words’.
• He has gained confidence when reading short passages eg in homework sheets: he will complete these independently and is proud of his work.
• There is less resistance when engaging him in learning activities outside of school: fewer moments of emotional dysregulation and avoidance.

The Forbrain headset was integral in helping Charlie achieve his recent successes. The number of previous interventions seemed fruitless as his learning outcomes remained static or with little movement. The benefits of Forbrain reach far with its’ ability to support concentration, and focus as well as build confidence, along with forging stronger neural pathways needed for reading and writing.

Helping your children progress with Forbrain

For the past couple of months, the COVID-19 pandemic has confronted us all with an unprecedented situation: social distancing, working remotely, homeschooling… unique circumstances which require a completely new organization, and it’s not always easy to stay calm and confident…If your child is facing learning difficulties, this may add some stress or make you feel irritated.

This might be a good opportunity to try Forbrain out!

When used a few minutes per day to work on school assignments, Forbrain is a very simple tool to use which can definitely help parents support their child with homeschooling challenges. Forbrain’s benefits can be seen almost instantly!

Concentration issues

Many parents currently express the difficulties they face whilst trying to get their child to focus and concentrate, in this very unique context that is homeschooling. By getting involved in their child’s academic learning much closer than ordinarily, parents may realize the difficulties that their child is facing at school. In addition, this change of environment also tends to distract children and may hurt their motivation to get homework done. The lack of clear structure also creates a lack of orientation: working in one’s bedroom or living room instead of a classroom, alone in front of a computer without benefiting from the group energy at school, with mom or dad and not with their usual teachers etc…  

How does it show?

Your child finds it difficult to get to study, you need to negotiate with him indefinitely, get angry or even threaten to ground him to get him to start working; and sometimes after 20 minutes (or less), he’ll lose his focus, start daydreaming and you need to help him get focused again, constantly check that he’s moving forward with his assignments and not just pretending… Actually, his lack of interest, the effort it requires, or the change of settings are preventing him from sustaining his attention and focusing on the task.

What does attention have to do with the ear?

Our ability to remain attentive depends on our general state of alertness and concentration, so that our nervous system can continue to be receptive to the information it has to process. This level of alertness is mostly supported by the ear and its ability to eliminate distractions, to maintain a high-quality and enduring listening experience. It is well known that a sustained level of attention allows one to think clearly, be more productive or better memorize a statement.

Why Forbrain?

Forbrain is a tool that activates cortical stimulation through the voice: it accentuates the contrasts of timbre and intensity of the voice to surprise the brain and thus regularly “awaken” it. It thus enables the brain to develop automatic mechanisms to detect changes which result in increased attention, concentration, and memorization.

When a child reads or learns a lesson with Forbrain, he is first challenged by what he hears: unexpected changes in intensity depending on the words he utters or the modulations of his voice. These changes prevent him from releasing his attention by constantly surprising the brain. It is like a game to which the ear clings and with it the child’s attention span. As the sessions progress, you feel that your child remains attentive for longer, concentrates better on his task, is more motivated on his studies. It’s a virtuous circle: the fewer difficulties he encounters, the less reluctant he is to get on with it…

Reading Difficulties

This is another major challenge for a parent who is not trained in teaching methods or who does not have a lot of time to devote to schoolwork at home. A child who stumbles over words, who is reluctant to read, who sometimes doesn’t even understand what he is reading, will also tend to lose motivation, as he is not stimulated by the classroom atmosphere or the teacher’s teaching tools and approach. This is often a great cause of anxiety for parents who know how much fluent reading is an essential prerequisite for all the child’s subsequent learning.

How is the ear involved?

Even in the case of silent reading, visual decoding is not enough; it is supported by the ear, which ensures good auditory discrimination, phonological awareness, and rhythmic perception of sentences. When a child reads out loud, he is involved in a natural process known as the “audio-vocal loop”: his or her verbal fluency is mechanically conditioned by the way his or her ear assimilates and analyses the sound information it receives. In other words, if your child is unable to read fluently, his or her audio-vocal loop is probably not functioning optimally.

Why Forbrain?

Forbrain is a bone-conduction headset that allows the user to get instant, amplified feedback of his own voice. At the same time, thanks to its dynamic filter, it amplifies the high frequencies of the voice and simultaneously decreases the low frequencies, bringing a clearer and more precise perception of the spoken words. It is therefore a tool to optimize the audio-vocal loop, which allows you to stimulate your listening capacities with your own voice and improve your voice thanks to the ear.

When reading with Forbrain, the child receives a better feedback of his voice and expression. In return, and according to the principles of the audio-vocal loop, he spontaneously improves his reading, gaining in verbal fluidity, body relaxation and breathing rhythm. Hearing his/her voice with more clarity leads to better reading skills.

At first, the child is surprised to hear himself. He hesitates to speak or read, as if intimidated by his own voice. Then very quickly, he gets into the game, finding pleasure in modulating his intonations, in putting rhythm in his phrasing, in making vocal effects. Getting used to reading out loud, he structures his reading better, finds better reference points in the words, gains in ease and endurance. He understands what he reads better, analyses it better and memorizes it better. The child becomes more independent, needing less support in reading and less training and support from a parent.

If Forbrain doesn’t solve all problems, it can be an excellent support for parents and children in these times, during which home-schooling challenges our patience and creativity.

Wouldn’t it be great if your children could actually have gained something during these homeschooling times?