Online school was implemented into a student’s daily life approximately three years ago when the COVID-19 pandemic just struck the whole world. This form of school was recently lifted around one and a half years ago in Orange County and now students are able to have the option of attending online school or in-person school. However, with each new wave of the coronavirus or each incoming variant of COVID-19, students are threatened with the thought of having to go back to online school. Behind the faces of quantities of students are the struggles that they have had to endure. Just one of the causes of these struggles would be online school. Struggles of loneliness, pressure, anxiety, and not knowing what to do surround the subject of online school. Online school not only affects students' mental health but also their education. Students would need the self-discipline to log into Zoom meetings on time and to finish their homework on time. They would also need to be independent because their teachers are never there next to them in online school. These characteristics are some that many young students are not capable of having and are a struggle even for many older students in general.  

     First of all, online school could lead to the poor mental health of students. According to e-student.org, Sander Tamm states, “The E-Learning methods currently practiced in education tend to make participating students undergo contemplation, remoteness and a lack of interaction. As a result, many of the students and teachers who inevitably spend much of their time online can start experiencing signs of social isolation, due to the lack of human communication in their lives. Social isolation coupled with a lack of communication often leads to several mental health issues such as heightened stress, anxiety, and negative thoughts.” This evidence proves how online school could lead to a decline in a student’s mental health. When students are home all day with no friends to keep them company, no classmates to socialize with, etc… it will lead to them feeling isolated and lonely. Staying at home all the time may lead to students feeling like they are missing out on their childhood, which are moments that cannot be repeated. Feeling lonely can trigger many other mental health illnesses such as depression and anxiety. 

     Furthermore, online school can lead to students getting worse grades and doing worse in their overall performance in school. Based on insidehindered.com, Doug Lederman reports, “Looking just at the performance of students in the pre-pandemic semesters (spring and fall 2019), the researchers found no substantive differences in completion rates, but they report that students in face-to-face courses were between five and seven percentage points less likely to earn a high grade (A or B) than were their peers in online courses. That gap in final grades between online and face-to-face students narrowed in spring 2020, though, as even the ‘face-to-face’ students ended up in ‘emergency remote’ courses.” This evidence supports the fact that students taking online courses seem to be doing much worse than their fellow students in in-person school. In online school, it is difficult for students to study by themselves and to be completely focused during Zoom sessions. It is not the student’s fault that they are doing poorly in online school, it is merely the school system that should be at fault. No one is perfect and therefore, we cannot expect any student, especially young students, to do well in an environment that provides so many distractions. Similarly, students who genuinely want to do well in school and are disappointed with their low grades could lead to them feeling worse about themselves when in reality, it is just the online school that they attend.

     Moreover, students may not get all the information that they need to acquire in school because teachers are not constantly in a classroom near them to help. As specified by the website e-student.org in an article by Sander Tamm, it states, “The lack of face-to-face communication ties together with many of the previously mentioned disadvantages of online learning. A lack of any kind of face-to-face communication with the instructor inhibits student feedback, causes social isolation, and could cause students to feel a lack of pressure. A lack of pressure is a disadvantage in the sense that it causes students to abandon their studies more easily. Constant nudging by professors may be undesirable for many, but it’s an effective method for improving student retention.” This evidence is proof that teachers are never going to be right next to students, always available to help them. The lack of teacher involvement in a student’s learning develops more of a burden on the student. They would either have to find out all of the information that they require by themselves which would be difficult, or they would have to ask a peer or family member who may not even know what the student needs to know. Circling back to the mental health topic, the more of a burden that gets put onto a student, the more they would struggle during online school. 

     All in all, there absolutely should not be online schools anymore. It causes an enormous amount of stress and anxiety to students that they should not have to bear at their age. The pressure that is put on students and the feeling of loneliness could lead to students resenting school. Online school could also lead to students learning less than they would in in-person school. It is useless to have online classes unless absolutely needed, so we shouldn’t implement the online school system any longer.