CHAPTER 18

Kids Care: Children’s Concerns and Recognition of Social Inequalities in the COVID-19 Pandemic

Lori Peek and Alice Fothergill

“Find out a need or a problem that exists and then think about how you can help fix the problem. And remember that it doesn’t matter how old you are, or how well you can move around, we can all pitch in and help each other out in some way. If we all give a hand, you know, everything won’t feel so heavy.”

—Eleven-year-old girl, Danbury, Connecticut

Introduction

The pandemic was not an equal opportunity event.1 Social and economic factors—age, gender, race, ethnicity, educational attainment, occupational status, and income, for example—influenced health care access, physical and mental health, workforce participation, and myriad other outcomes.2 Those who were over the age of sixty-five, living in poverty, nonwhite, or otherwise experiencing social marginalization suffered some of the most severe consequences of the pandemic.3 Inequality also marked young people’s experiences, although much of the public discourse surrounding children focused on the fact that they were the age group least susceptible to illness and death.

In the United States, initial data did indeed show that children made up less than 1 percent of those who died during the pandemic.4 Children were certainly not immune, however, and by 2023 COVID-19 had become the eighth most common cause of death among young people under a year old through age nineteen.5 According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black and Latinx children experienced higher rates of mortality6 and morbidity,7 as they were more likely to live in households with adults who were deemed essential workers and who were therefore more likely to be exposed to the virus at work and bring it home. Children of color were also more prone to suffer preexisting health conditions, reside in crowded living conditions, experience food insecurity, and have limited or no access to computers or the internet. When compared to adults, children may have been especially susceptible to depression and anxiety related to disease containment measures, such as social distancing and home quarantine.8 Further, estimates suggest that 265,000 children in the United States lost a parent or caregiver to COVID-19, leaving a generation of children bereaved.9

The pandemic clearly took a serious toll on children that could have long-term consequences across their life courses.10 Yet children’s voices—their perspectives, experiences, and concerns—were rarely heard during the pandemic.11 In some instances the issues they cared about were actively silenced by government officials.12

Despite the widespread exclusion of children during the pandemic, a growing number of recent studies center the voices of young people. For example, Euna Carpenter and colleagues conducted two waves of structured interviews with twenty-eight US children between the ages of seven and eleven.13 Their research sheds light on how children’s home life changed during the pandemic and summarizes their participants’ reflections on social isolation, school, and technology. Carpenter and colleagues found that while children offered realistic assessments of the challenges of the pandemic, they also showed curiosity and ingenuity in the face of adversity. Carolina Pitt and coauthors drew on surveys administered three times a week via mobile phones. They used these surveys as well as in-depth interviews to assess well-being and technology use among a sample of twenty-one US teens aged fourteen to nineteen.14 They found that family connections, interactions via technology, and in-person reunions improved children’s emotional outlook. Christine Gibb and colleagues surveyed youths ages twelve to eighteen and the parents of children ages five to eleven in Canada and the United States.15 Their research revealed that young people often felt bored, isolated, and lonely and that they were especially affected by being abruptly disconnected from family and friends, losing their regular routines, and missing important milestones, such as high school graduations. Their work also found that children and teens developed ways to cope with these challenges through exercising personal agency.

Children have a fundamental human right to be listened to, respected, and protected. Articles 12 and 13 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child affirm that children have the right to be heard in judicial and administrative proceedings and to express their views freely on information and ideas.16 Our goal in this chapter is to respond to this and other calls to pay attention to children’s perspectives17 by answering this question: What issues were children concerned about during the COVID-19 pandemic? Our analyses seek to clarify the major social problems that children cared about, what actions they took in response, and whom they sought to help.

Children’s Concerns and Responses During COVID-19

For our research, we draw on a dataset of English-language media stories about the experiences of US children during the COVID-19 pandemic.18 Most of our searches returned articles that quoted adults and described their actions on behalf of young people. Although this coverage provided important context, we only discovered a limited number of articles that quoted or were written specifically about children. We ultimately identified and analyzed 115 news articles that appeared in either print or online news sources between January 2020 and November 2023. Many of the articles focused on multiple issues and different responses among children, but a clear theme of children working to help others in the pandemic emerged.

We organized the following sections around five key concerns that children expressed related to: (1) mental health and well-being, (2) shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE), (3) school closures and educational disparities, (4) hunger and food access, and (5) vaccine access and uptake. These were not the only issues addressed in the articles, but they appeared most frequently and were the ones that children most often helped with.19 It is important to emphasize that we do not assume that these were the only or perhaps even the most critical issues of concern to the more than seventy-three million children under the age of eighteen who live in the United States. Rather, our focus here is on summarizing the primary issues that were addressed when the media focused its coverage on children’s actions and concerns in the pandemic.

Mental Health and Well-Being

The social isolation and profound disruption caused by the pandemic led to a deterioration in mental health among many people in the United States, and young people were among those most severely impacted.20 The children and youths who were featured in the news stories that we analyzed used the words “exhausted,” “stressed,” “overwhelmed,” “lonely,” “depressed,” “anxious,” and “sad” to describe their feelings. For example, a fourteen-year-old girl from Brooklyn said, “I felt like I was trapped in my own little house and everyone was far away. . . . During the beginning of quarantine, I was so alone. All the sad things I used to brush off, I realized I couldn’t brush them off anymore.”21 Also speaking to the impacts of isolation, a sixteen-year-old boy said, “Unless you try extremely hard, there’s no chance to make new friends this year.”

Young people who were featured in the articles were not only worried about their own mental health. They also were deeply concerned about those around them—including their classmates, their grandparents and other older adults in their community, the frontline workers in health care and other industries, and those with the fewest economic resources. Young people responded by engaging in individual acts of kindness, such as drawing hearts on sidewalks, writing letters to residents at local nursing homes, and creating handmade thank-you cards for medical personnel.

Young people also helped expand the services of existing mental health organizations and established new groups. For example, teenage volunteers for Teen Line, a Los Angeles–based nonprofit organization that encourages teens in crisis to confide in other teens via talk and text, trained new volunteers to provide emotional support to their peers.22 In Atlanta, Georgia, two teens founded Lovett’s Mental Health Liaisons to bring attention to student mental health and provide training for peer liaisons tasked with creating student-directed programming around mental health.23 These peer liaisons connected students with mental health concerns to counseling staff at their school.

Children and youths also provided comfort and encouragement to adults in their communities. For example, a high school girl in South Carolina developed Generations Connections, in which high school students partnered with local senior centers to exchange calls and letters.24 Another student in Massachusetts recognized that feelings of isolation were a particular struggle for Black and Latinx seniors. In response, she joined the program Community Voices: Speaking Truth. During the pandemic, she coordinated virtual wellness check-ins that connected youth participants with older adults so they would have someone to talk to and trade stories with.

PPE Shortages

The COVID-19 pandemic created an urgent need for PPE to minimize people’s exposure to the deadly virus. In March 2020 as the first wave of the pandemic moved across the United States, a surge of people sought out face masks, protective eyewear, caps, and other items meant to shield people from harm. PPE shortages among health care providers were covered extensively in the news, often accompanied by photos or video of medical professionals working while wearing ski goggles over their eyes or cloth bandanas covering their faces.

Children and youths learned of this dire situation through their friends, family members, and social media. For example, one teen recounted that a “family friend from Florida who was an ER doctor had to reuse the same mask for multiple weeks.” She underscored that “this is the first time in my lifetime that I’ve seen such a large crisis happen . . . and it just showed me how much in need doctors and nurses are of PPE.”25 She ultimately raised $3,000 and collected more than twelve thousand masks for distribution at her local hospital.

Other young people channeled their worries about PPE shortages into activities where they were producing products to help others. Several of the teens featured in the news stories used 3D printers from their schools to print large volumes of PPE. Others learned how to sew masks for themselves and their family members. Once they were confident in their abilities, these young people ended up donating hundreds and sometimes thousands of handmade masks to senior centers, homeless shelters, and hospitals. For example, a twelve-year-old budding fashion designer from the Bay Area in California sewed an estimated five hundred unique masks for health care workers. In describing what motivated her, she said, “I had to help because medical workers were doing so much for us. They risk their lives and their families to help others. . . . It is very important that during a time like this we help each other and come together as a community.”26

School Closures and Educational Disparities

At the onset of the pandemic, nearly all US schools closed for a brief window and then abruptly transitioned from in-person to remote learning environments. These actions were necessary from a public health perspective, but they also disrupted children’s daily routines, severed vital connections with supportive adults and peers, led to learning loss, and compounded already existing inequalities among children.27

In news coverage, children often described their struggles with online learning—the distraction, boredom, and sense of disconnection that permeated the school day. Young people recognized and were worried about the consequences of pandemic-related disruptions for their own learning. In many cases, though, they expressed more alarm about their overworked teachers, classmates from low-income families who lacked access to the internet or computers, and peers who did not speak English fluently or regularly at home.

In response, children sought to encourage their teachers and assist their peers. In Las Vegas, more than one thousand charter school students decorated cars with balloons, flags, and signs and took part in an “appreciation parade” to show support for local educators.28 Other young people tried to assist teachers even more actively by creating supplementary child-focused educational materials. For example, one fourteen-year-old boy who developed academic materials specifically for young children said, “I wanted to create books and journals that will keep kids learning and engaged by creating educational content accompanied by activities.”29 A seven-year-old boy used his YouTube channel, Mathematicals, to teach math and to encourage young people to pay attention in school rather than play video games.30

Young people also helped those in need by forming online study groups and launching online tutoring services. One such group, StudySmart Youth Services, was established by high school students in the early days of the pandemic.31 The teen tutors were concerned with addressing educational disparities, so they offered free online one-hour tutoring sessions to hundreds of K–8 students in need. Another group, Boston COVID Tutoring, was founded in April 2020 by four teens. Within months they had 330 volunteers, but the leaders realized that those who were accessing their services were mostly from higher- and middle-income areas. Because they wanted to address educational inequality along race and class lines, they recruited Spanish-speaking tutors and reached out to groups serving low-income children, children of color, and recent arrivals to the United States. One of the founders of the group emphasized its short- and long-term goals with the tutoring initiative: “We’re just trying to fill holes the best we can. We are hoping for a more systemic, broader change in the future, but we really want to do everything we can to provide the best possible learning experience in this moment.”32

Some students continued to provide services they initiated before the pandemic. For instance, a fifteen-year-old boy began the nonprofit Kid by Kid when he was in eighth grade to provide in-person tutoring sessions to students ages five to thirteen from refugee and immigrant families who were learning English. He moved the services to an online format during the pandemic in response to so many students “missing opportunities for education.” With the “big influx” of students needing services, he emphasized that their goal was to “close the COVID education gap.”33 In the same vein, two teens in California cofounded Meaningful Teens, an organization designed to connect nonprofits with bilingual high school volunteers.34 During the pandemic, they expanded their volunteer base to include nearly two hundred bilingual teens who offered reading and English-language education classes to non-English–proficient children and youths who were at risk of falling further behind in the pandemic.

Hunger and Food Access

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed and exacerbated long-standing issues with hunger across the United States. The pandemic also disrupted food supply chains and caused myriad other issues related to food access when schools, food pantries, homeless shelters, and other sources of stable nutrition for low-income populations closed. Furthermore, even for those who could afford food, fears regarding exposure and disease transmission made it especially difficult for those most at risk to the virus to shop for their own food.

Children were again concerned and motivated to respond. For example, two teenage boys in Maryland were inspired to create Teens Helping Seniors, a no-contact grocery and medicine delivery service, after they watched the virus impact their grandparents. Within weeks, sixty teens had volunteered, and the group had made more than eighty deliveries to older adult homes. In reflecting on their efforts, one of the cofounders said, “We thought maybe there are people in vulnerable populations out there, especially seniors, who don’t have family to rely on during these times. I said, ‘Maybe I can make their life a little bit easier and also reduce the risk.’”35

Young people who were concerned about those experiencing hunger and food insecurity went to great lengths during the pandemic to gather food and drop off care packages. The media coverage described young people who raised money for local food banks and gave their own savings and wages to help provide meals for others. One teen started a foundation called Uniting Kids Against Poverty and Sickness that organized a food drive and bought meals from restaurants to deliver to frontline workers. The founder emphasized that she wanted to continue the work of fighting poverty and serving others. She said, “When the coronavirus is gone one day, we still want to be able to help people and do our best to help as many people as possible.”36

Vaccine Access and Uptake

Until May of 2025, federal guidance emphasized that COVID-19 vaccines were safe, effective, and free. Everyone in the United States age six months and older were encouraged to get the vaccine as the best way to help protect people from COVID-19. The vaccine was first made available in December 2020 to people over the age of sixteen; a year and a half would pass, however, before the youngest age groups became eligible to receive the vaccine (Figure 18.1).

A small number of news articles highlighted the concerns of children who were left waiting for the vaccine. In some instances, they were angry that people had discontinued wearing masks when children were not yet eligible to be vaccinated. In other cases, children reported being sad and scared as they waited for their opportunity to receive the vaccine.

Children channeled their emotions into action by volunteering to participate in vaccine trials or being among the first wave to get vaccinated. Some of the featured children noted that they were eager to participate because they wanted to stop masking and feel safe so they could spend time with friends and family. However, most of them gave altruistic explanations for their actions. For example, children who participated in early vaccine trials said they wanted to show gratitude and to say “thank you to the frontline workers who are keeping us healthy” and that they wanted to help “science to beat the pandemic.”37 Two young brothers who participated in a vaccine trial noted that they were “excited that we’re doing something for history, something that’s going to be important,” and hoped that they could “set an example for everybody” to get the vaccine.38

Some youths were alarmed about uneven vaccine coverage and the low adoption rates of other public health measures. In response, a group of high school and college students created the COVIDucation website, where they used interactive storytelling to explain the virus and safety precautions to children. The materials from the website were ultimately implemented across all elementary schools in Sarasota County, Florida.39 Adolescents spoke out at community and school board meetings on behalf of social distancing, mask wearing, and other measures meant to keep unvaccinated or otherwise vulnerable people safe. Sometimes older adults had trouble navigating the complicated online vaccine sign-up systems. One Vermont teen, concerned about this barrier to vaccines, helped her grandmother get an appointment and then wondered, “How many other seniors are out there who don’t have someone to do this for them?”40 She was also worried about people who could not access online registration systems because they worked and could not devote the time to the complicated process. As she became skilled in navigating online portals, word spread about the help she was offering, and she ultimately was able to schedule more than three hundred vaccine appointments for those who could not make them on their own.

Conclusion

In our previous research on children in the aftermath of Katrina, we found that culturally, children affected by disasters continue to be cast by the media as well as members of the public as either vulnerable victims or as highly resilient.41 These polarized conceptions are oversimplifications that can prevent young people from being seen as diverse, complex, and in need of outlets to channel their energy toward causes that matter to them.

To better understand what issues young people were concerned about during the pandemic, we drew on media coverage that centered children’s perspectives and actions. We found that coverage mostly focused on the heart-wrenching and often heroic stories of individual children. Journalists tended to magnify the challenges that children experienced during the pandemic and the creative ways that they responded. Upon closer examination, however, it became apparent that the young people at the center of the stories were often trying to organize and collectively mobilize groups of children and youths to address systemic inequalities that rendered entire groups of people disproportionately vulnerable during the pandemic. Specifically, we found that children were especially eager to work with their peers to help frontline workers, health care providers, non-English-speaking populations, children and families without access to the internet or tutoring services, and people experiencing food insecurity. They also helped people at high risk of illness or death, such as older adults, the unhoused, those living in poverty, and those who were members of nonwhite racial or ethnic groups. The coverage also revealed that many of the children had developed a critical consciousness of the systemic inequalities that were worsening nearly every consequence of the pandemic for the most socially marginalized. They understood that the COVID-19 disaster was not affecting people equally and therefore required a targeted, organized, and socially just response.

This study adds to a rapidly growing body of child-centered social science disaster research that focuses on children’s perspectives and capacities.42 Although we were only able to identify a limited amount of news coverage that focused specifically on children and their concerns and helping behaviors, we provide examples of issues that children cared about and, importantly, how they channeled their concerns into actions that had measurable impacts. Our findings complement recent research on how children are drawing on their emotions to fight for climate justice and to respond to other forms of catastrophe.43

Our study demonstrates that children have the potential to contribute to conversations regarding social and economic inequality and how society might best respond to injustices. Further, their engagement with already existing organizations as well as their motivation to create new groups during the pandemic showcases the systemic impact that children can have when they work together and mobilize their own social networks through online forums. This has important implications for thinking about children as interdependent members of society whose agency emerges from their interactions with others.44 Children and youths can and do play an important role in socializing others, and when their voices are heard and their actions are seen, they have clearly demonstrated their capacity to contribute to lifesaving and community-sustaining actions.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (Award #1635593) and the STUDIO Lab for Undergraduate Research in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. Zoe Lefkowitz, Melissa Villarreal, Simran Chowdhari, and Musabber Ali Chisty provided valuable research assistance. Our participation in the COVIDCalls podcasts and publication in the Social Science Research Council’s Items series sparked the initial idea for this chapter, which we gratefully acknowledge. We also thank the editors, Alexa Dietrich, Scott Knowles, and Rodrigo Ugarte, for their vision and effort in drawing the edited volume together.

Notes

1. 1.  The epigraph is from Reni Calister and Danielle Genet, “Giving Tuesday: Teen Donates ‘Snack Packs’ to Food Pantries and More Kids Giving Back Amid the Pandemic,” Good Morning America, December 1, 2020, https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/living/story/giving-tuesday-teen-donates-snack-packs-food-pantries-74465270.
2. 2.  Zackary D. Berger et al., “COVID-19: Control Measures Must Be Equitable and Inclusive,” BMJ 368 (2020): m1141, https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m1141.
3. 3.  Brea L. Perry, Brian Aronson, and Bernice A. Pescosolido, “Pandemic Precarity: COVID-19 Is Exposing and Exacerbating Inequalities in the American Heartland,” PNAS 118, no. 8 (2021): e2020685118, https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2020685118.
4. 4.  Danae Bixler et al., “SARS-CoV-2-Associated Deaths Among Persons Aged <21 Years—United States, February 12–July 31, 2020,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 69 (2020): 1324–29, http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6937e4.
5. 5.  Seth Flaxman et al., “Assessment of COVID-19 as the Underlying Cause of Death Among Children and Young People Aged 0 to 19 Years in the US,” JAMA Network Open 6, no. 1 (2023): e2253590, doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.53590.
6. 6.  Bixler et al., “SARS-CoV-2-Associated Deaths Among Persons Aged <21 Years.”
7. 7.  Rebecca T. Leeb et al., “Mental-Health Related Emergency Department Visits Among Children Aged <18 Years During the COVID-19 Pandemic—United States, January 1–October 1, 2020,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 69, no. 1 (2020): 1675–80, http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6945a3.
8. 8.  Maria Elizabeth Loades et al., “Rapid Systematic Review: The Impact of Social Isolation and Loneliness on the Mental Health of Children and Adolescents in the Context of COVID-19,” Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry 59, no. 11 (November 2020): 1218–39, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2020.05.009; and Giulia Segre et al., “Interviewing Children: The Impact of the COVID-19 Quarantine on Children’s Perceived Psychological Distress and Changes in Routine,” BMC Pediatrics 21 (2021): 1–11, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12887-021-02704-1.
9. 9.  National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Addressing the Long-Term Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Children and Families (National Academy Press, 2023), https://doi.org/10.17226/26809.
10. 10.  Ian H. Gotlib et al., “Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Mental Health and Brain Maturation in Adolescents: Implications for Analyzing Longitudinal Data,” Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science 3, no. 4 (October 2023): 912–18, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsgos.2022.11.002.
11. 11.  Lori Peek and Alice Fothergill, “What Kids Can Do: Paying Attention to Children’s Capacities in the Pandemic,” Items, February 25, 2021, https://items.ssrc.org/covid-19-and-the-social-sciences/disaster-studies/what-kids-can-do-paying-attention-to-childrens-capacities-in-the-pandemic/; and Helen Lomax et al., “Creating Online Participatory Research Spaces: Insights from Creative, Digitally Mediated Research with Children During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Families, Relationships and Societies 11, no. 1 (2022): 19–37, https://doi.org/10.1332/204674321X16274828934070.
12. 12.  Molly Morgan Jones, Dominic Abrams, and Aditi Lahiri, “Shape and Future: How the Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts Can SHAPE a Positive, Post-Pandemic Future for Peoples, Economies, and Environments,” Journal of the British Academy 8 (2020): 167–266, https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/008.167; and Andrew Rowland and Dianne L. Cook, “Unlocking Children’s Voices During SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic Lockdown,” Archives of Disease in Childhood 106, no. 3 (2020): e13, http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/archdischild-2020-319894.
13. 13.  Euna Carpenter et al., “Being Me in Times of Change: Young Children’s Reflections on Their Lives During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Children & Society, September 2, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12790.
14. 14.  Caroline Pitt et al., “The Kids Are / Not / Sort of All Right: Technology’s Complex Role in Teen Wellbeing During COVID-19,” Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, May 7, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445541.
15. 15.  Christine Gibb et al., Children, Teens, and Older Adults in COVID-19, Quick Response Research Award Program Report Series, 354 (Natural Hazards Center, University of Colorado Boulder, 2023), https://hazards.colorado.edu/quick-response-report/children-teens-and-older-adults-in-covid-19.
16. 16.  United Nations General Assembly, Resolution 44/25, Convention on the Rights of the Child (November 20, 1989), https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-rights-child.
17. 17.  William A. Anderson, “Bringing Children into Focus on the Social Science Disaster Research Agenda,” International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters 23, no. 3 (2005): 159–75, https://doi.org/10.1177/028072700502300308; and Lori Peek, “Children and Disasters: Understanding Vulnerability, Developing Capacities, and Promoting Resilience,” Children, Youth, and Environments 18, no. 1 (2008): 1–29, https://doi.org/10.1353/cye.2008.0052.
18. 18.  Zoe Lefkowitz et al., “Children and the COVID-19 Pandemic,” DesignSafe-CI 2024, https://doi.org/10.17603/ds2-gha4-x973.
19. 19.  Lori Peek et al., “Children’s Knowledge and Altruistic Behaviors in COVID-19: Disaster Literacy Through Lived Experience,” Journal of Hazard Literacy (forthcoming, 2026).
20. 20.  Mark É. Czeisler et al., “Mental Health, Substance Use, and Suicidal Ideation During the COVID-19 Pandemic—United States, June 24–30, 2020,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 69, no. 32 (2020): 1049–57, doi: 10.15585/mmwr.mm6932a1.
21. 21.  Emma Goldberg, “Teens in Covid Isolation: ‘I felt like I was suffocating,’” New York Times, November 12, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/12/health/covid-teenagers-mental-health.html.
22. 22.  Ellen McCarthy, “The Loneliness of an Interrupted Adolescence,” Washington Post, February 11, 2021, accessed February 1, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/teenagers-covid-pandemic-mental-health/2021/02/10/3389983a-39d6-11eb-9276-ae0ca72729be_story.html.
23. 23.  Collin Kelley, “20 Under 20: Honoring Students Who Give Back to the Community,” RoughDraft Atlanta, January 2, 2023, https://roughdraftatlanta.com/2023/01/02/20-under-20-honoring-students-who-give-back-to-the-community-3/.
24. 24.  Adam Felts, “OMEGA Scholarship Awarded to High School Students Who Fostered Multigenerational Connections,” MIT News, October 28, 2021, accessed May 3, 2023, https://news.mit.edu/2021/omega-scholarships-awarded-high-school-students-foster-multigenerational-connections-1028.
25. 25.  Enjoli Francis and Eric Noll, “15-Year-Old Collects 12,000 Protective Masks for Hospital Staff,” ABC News, April 30, 2020, accessed September 13, 2023, https://abcnews.go.com/US/15-year-collects-12000-protective-masks-hospital-staff/story?id=70444226.
26. 26.  Jacqueline Laurean Yates, “12-Year-Old Fashion Designer Makes Masks for Health Care Workers on the Front Lines of COVID-19,” Good Morning America, April 14, 2020, https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/gma/story/12-year-fashion-designer-makes-masks-health-care-70117354.
27. 27.  Richard Armitage and Laura B. Nellums, “Considering Inequalities in the School Closure Response to COVID-19,” The Lancet 8, no. 5 (May 2020): E644, https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(20)30116-9.
28. 28.  Christopher Lawrence, “Lights in 2020: Many in Southern Nevada Stepped Up to Help During Pandemic,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, December 28, 2020, https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/local-las-vegas/100-acts-of-kindness-southern-nevadans-stepped-up-to-help-during-pandemic-2229725/.
29. 29.  Michael Aims, “Young Author Creatively Helping Kids Learn During the Pandemic,” PR Newswire, January 25, 2021, https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/young-author-creatively-helping-kids-learn-during-the-pandemic-301213874.html.
30. 30.  Japhanie Gray, “What’s Up South Texas! San Antonio 7-Year-Old Educates Elementary Kids in Math During Pandemic,” KSAT, August 30, 2020, https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2020/08/31/whats-up-south-texas-san-antonio-7-year-old-educates-elementary-kids-in-math-during-pandemic/.
31. 31.  Ada Tseng, “Students Are Creating Free Tutoring Services to Help During COVID-19,” Los Angeles Times, October 13, 2020, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-10-13/free-online-tutoring-resources-la-students.
32. 32.  Julie Manganis, “Students Hope Free Tutoring Will Help Children Keep Up, Catch Up During Pandemic,” Salem News, February 7, 2022, https://www.salemnews.com/news/students-hope-free-tutoring-will-help-children-keep-up-catch-up-during-pandemic/article_5e0d624a-851f-11ec-bc65-471757184156.html.
33. 33.  Elisabeth Frausto, “Kid by Kid: Bishop’s School Student’s Tutoring Nonprofit Helps Immigrant Kids Despite Pandemic,” San Diego Union-Tribune, September 10, 2020, https://www.lajollalight.com/news/story/2020-09-10/kid-by-kid-local-teens-nonprofit-pivots-to-ensure-students-access-to-education-assistance.
34. 34.  Gillian Smith, “Virtual Volunteers: Local Teens Create Bilingual Education Org,” Patch, July 31, 2020, accessed July 21, 2023, https://patch.com/california/lamorinda/virtual-volunteers-local-teens-create-bilingual-education-org.
35. 35.  Tom Dempsey, “No School, No Problem: Two Teens Start No-Contact Grocery Delivery Service for Senior Citizens,” WUSA9, April 11, 2020, https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/no-school-no-problem-two-teens-start-no-contact-grocery-delivery-service-for-senior-citizens/65-04373049-8eee-411f-b7a0-0d407665f65d.
36. 36.  Heath Morrison, “Coronavirus Pandemic Inspires 15-Year-Old Massachusetts Teen to Start Foundation That Inspires Kids to Help Their Local Communities Around the World,” Masslive, May 29, 2020, https://www.masslive.com/coronavirus/2020/05/coronavirus-pandemic-inspires-15-year-old-massachusetts-teen-to-start-foundation-that-inspires-kids-to-help-their-local-communities-around-the-world.html.
37. 37.  Jan Hoffman, “To Get Their Lives Back, Teens Volunteer for Vaccine Trials,” New York Times, February 16, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/16/health/covid-vaccine-teens.html.
38. 38.  “Brothers Participate in Local Vaccine Trial for Kids,” ABC News, June 9, 2021, https://abc13.com/baylor-college-of-medicine-moderna-pfizer-covid-19-vaccine/10767979/.
39. 39.  Brynn Mechem, “Fab Lab Students Create Site to Help Elementary Kids Learn About COVID-19,” Observer, August 24, 2020, https://www.yourobserver.com/news/2020/aug/24/fab-lab-students-create-site-to-help-elementary-kids-learn-about-covid-19/.
40. 40.  Alison Novak, “Pandemic All-Star: Ailsa O’Neil-Dunne, Volunteer Vaccination Scheduler, Burlington,” Seven Days, June 9, 2021, https://www.sevendaysvt.com/news/pandemic-all-star-ailsa-oneil-dunne-volunteer-vaccination-scheduler-burlington-33160112.
41. 41.  Alice Fothergill and Lori Peek, Children of Katrina (University of Texas Press, 2015).
42. 42.  For overviews, see Maggie Mort, Israel Rodríguez-Giralt, and Ana Delicado, “Introducing CUIDAR: A Child-Centered Approach to Disasters,” in Children and Young People’s Participation in Disaster Risk Reduction: Agency and Resilience, ed. Maggie Mort, Israel Rodríguez-Giralt, and Ana Delicado (Policy, 2020); and Lori Peek et al., “Children and Disasters,” in Handbook of Disaster Research, 2nd ed., ed. Havidán Rodríguez, William Donner, and Joseph E. Trainor (Springer, 2018).
43. 43.  Julia Coombs Fine et al., “A Song in a Cold Place: The Role of Emotions in Motivating Youth Activism and Advancing Justice at the COP,” Climate and Development 16, no. 10 (2023): 848–59, https://doi.org/10.1080/17565529.2023.2261406.
44. 44.  Nwakerendu Waboso et al., “‘We Can Play Tag with a Stick’: Children’s Knowledge, Experiences, Feelings, and Creative Thinking During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Children & Society 37, no. 1 (2023): 199–215, https://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12579.