The problem of the ‘Covid Generation’

In this talk for the ‘Connecting Generations’ project, I discuss the unsettling questions raised by the transformation of the Covid-19 pandemic into a generational problem.

The pandemic has brought to the fore many features of the problem of generations that have exercised the sociological imagination for a century. These include the potential for tensions and collaboration, the difficulties expressed by modern societies in educating and socialising young people, and the potential emergence of a distinct form of generational consciousness. Yet predictions of dire outcomes for a global ‘Covid generation’, or the presentation of the pandemic response as something that was done to protect the old at the expense of the young, are simplistic and divisive.

Recorded via the University of Southampton on 19 July 2022.