'This Is Not Life': Psychosocial Experiences of Hungarian Secondary School Students During COVID-19 School Closures: A Retrospective Qualitative Study.

Background/

Objectives

School closures and social restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic substantially disrupted adolescents' everyday lives. However, much of the existing evidence relies on standardized measures or retrospective accounts, providing less insight into how adolescents themselves described the psychosocial meaning of this disruption while it was still unfolding. This study aimed to explore Hungarian secondary school students' real-time written reflections on their experiences during COVID-19-related school closures, online education, and social restrictions, with a focus on adolescent mental health, peer connectedness, school belonging, and developmental disruption.

Methods

A retrospective qualitative study was conducted using 111 anonymized open-ended student reflections written in 2021 during the active period of online education and social restrictions. The texts were originally produced in a pedagogical-reflective context, not as research interviews or questionnaire responses. The material was analysed using structured qualitative content analysis. Two researchers independently coded the texts; disagreements were resolved through discussion, and a third researcher was involved when consensus was required. Descriptive frequency summaries were used to contextualize the qualitative findings.

Results

In the descriptive frequency summaries, negative appraisals were most common in relation to the general pandemic situation, online schooling, and peer relationships. Thematic analysis identified recurring patterns of confinement, loss of normality, reduced peer contact, weakened school routines, academic overload, uncertainty about graduation and the future, and the loss of age-specific adolescent experiences and transition rituals. Family appeared as both a stabilizing resource and, in some cases, a source of conflict or additional burden. A central interpretive theme was that adolescents experienced the pandemic not merely as educational disruption but as an interruption of adolescence itself.

Conclusions

The findings highlight that adolescent mental health support during large-scale crises should extend beyond maintaining educational continuity. Early prevention and intervention strategies should preserve peer connectedness, school belonging, daily structure, emotional validation, and developmentally sensitive support during future pandemics or comparable periods of prolonged social restriction.