Veronika: Hi, my name is Veronika.
Tasha: I’m Tasha.
Matthew: Matthew.
Laila: Laila.
Kevonte: My name is Kevonte.
Jess: Hi, I’m Jess.
Sarah: My name is Sarah, and five years ago during Covid, I was in year 11, so I was doing my GCSEs.
Veronika: I was in year nine.
Tasha: I was in my final year at sixth form.
Matthew: I was in my first year at college.
Laila: I was in year 11.
Jess: I was in year 10.
Kevonte: Covid made the world stop completely.
Tasha: At the time, when I looked on social media, there was just a lot of people catastrophising about the whole Covid situation. So being like, 'oh, this is it, the end of the world' and stuff like that.
Jess: I saw things about having a chip in your arm and they're going to start tracking you. The government wants to keep an eye on everyone.
Sarah: Seeing a lot of stories about people breaking lockdown rules.
Laila: I read a lot of like fake media, especially on different apps like Instagram, TikTok, all of it. It was just plastered in all this fake media.
Veronika: I wasn't on social media much before Covid and getting into social media. It was. I was obsessed with it.
Tasha: I definitely found myself using social media more because it was the only way to sort of keep in touch with people at the time.
Jess: You go in on the likes of TikTok, on to Instagram and everyone's talking about it and you can't escape it.
Kevonte: Constantly scrolling through social media, constantly on video calls with friends and other family members.
Laila: During lockdown, I was just on my phone constantly because there was nothing else for me to do.
Veronika: I think at that time I used to believe everything that was in social media.
Jess: Some of their stories I was reading, you were just thinking, there's absolutely no way that that can be true.
Kevonte: You're like, what is real? What is fake? What to believe? What do I do? Do I take the vaccine? Do I not take it? What do I do to stay safe? Like it's like you feel like you're losing your mind.
Tasha: I definitely kind of altered my way of thinking in terms of how I read the news and keep updated about things.
Sarah: I think to find out if the story is true, I'd probably cross-reference it between news articles.
Jess: I look at the media and see if they're broadcasting it, if the story is as big as what it is, or if it's just one video on your phone that's got a few hundred likes.
Kevonte: If I see it from the BBC news or any of those news channel, it is real and it's a valid source.
Matthew: I got too deep into the Twitter side and, right okay, let's go and have a look at what a doctor says or what actual professionals say. And that kind of got me back on track.
Jess: Everyone was speculating and everyone was taking one piece of a story and adding to it or taking away from it, and then you end up with a completely different story to what it started off with.
Tasha: There was a lot of talk about the vaccine and what it was made of.
Veronika: But there were so many different theories like the 5G one, the microchips, and there was so many over social media. I just remember being overwhelmed. To be honest, I didn't know what to believe.
Five years on from the Covid-19 lockdown, we caught up with a group of young people who were in school and college in 2020 to find out how the pandemic impacted their use of social media, and how it affected their relationship with news.
Not sure if the news you’re seeing on social media is true or false? Can you always tell if the things you see online are real or fake? Learn how to get the other side of the story with our quizzes, videos and explainers.
