To Örebro University

The rapid development of the information and communications technology (ICT) and the social media platforms after the Facebook’s launch in 2004 offered the Millennials several channels not only for developing skills for online communication but also for developing the habit of spending time online to get inform, to learn and to distant socializing. Therefore, before the outbreak of the coronavirus COVID-19 in 2020, almost all students, many of them Millennials, were very accustomed to and presumably expect that the benefits outweigh the costs of adapting to new digital applications when moving from the traditional classroom to digital learning platforms. At the same time, the use of social media and computer games are assumed to be responsible for the sharp increase of students’ voluntary delay in study-related activities.

Earlier literature suggests that learning lost due to inefficient learning strategies and tools, student’s procrastination and/or school closure due to a shock such as the Coronavirus outbreak in 2020 use to lead to worse outcomes, both in form of failing exams, but also in a superficial accumulation of knowledge needed in most cases in other courses. Additionally, the learning loss was accompanied with worse health outcomes in the long run.

In this paper, we analyze data from Sweden during 2018-2021, covering the period where the concept "Swedish exceptionalism" was once again popularized when the seemingly non-authoritative wait-and-see strategy relying on the individual’s own responsibility given governmental voluntary recommendations got huge international attention. In this setting, recommendations were that all teaching, learning and examinations at the higher-education organizations were to be done remotely. Nevertheless, compared to other countries, Sweden was an exception, locally allowing for larger flexibility within all educational units at all educational levels, implying that the educational system was never locked down.

Using data from several surveys about students online learning and their well-being during 2018-2021, our results suggest that the average well-being of the students, measured in terms of general life-satisfaction, did not decrease significantly after March 2020. But the majority of the students were emotionally affected by the social isolation.