Emotions, social support and positive resources during Covid-19 pandemic: A qualitative-quantitative survey among italian adolescents

Abstract

Covid-19 pandemic had a massive impact on adolescents. The present study illustrates an online survey administered to N = 861 Italian adolescents (mean age = 15.81 years; females 58%), asking them about: (i) the most frequent negative emotions during the pandemic; (ii) the main sources of social support; (iii) whether they had also experienced positive emotions; (iv) in which lifedomains they had experienced positive emotions. The results reveal that adolescents experienced boredom, sadness, fear, and agitation as negative emotions. The respondents reported family, friends and themselves as sources of social support. The main life-domains in which adolescents experienced positive emotions were: new discoveries in self-awareness, inner growth, relational skills. This study highlights that the pandemic has elicited positive resources (e.g., resilience, creativity and generativity) in adolescents, laying the foundations for interventions, in developmental and educational psychology, that are not top-down but bottom-up.