It has been five years since Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham told New Mexico schools to close for three weeks, which then became 13 months of isolation, forcing students and teachers to move online and participate in school solely through online tools.
Jill Holtz, a behavioral health psychologist, said that paranoia about contamination and health was very common at the start of quarantine.
Losing loved ones, having limited freedom at home, and moving to online school, altogether, caused great stress for many of the adolescents she worked with at the time, she said.
“They have this idea of what school is supposed to be like, and in many ways, they were kind of deprived of that,” Holtz said.
Platforms like Canvas, Google Classroom and Zoom remain essential in many schools, serving as hubs for posting assignments, accessing educational content and enabling communication, according to Brookings Education.
As academic architecture changed, so did social architecture, especially for students.
Since college is typically seen as an opportunity to socialize, network and make connections with people who share similar interests, the quiet transition into quarantine and online school was felt pretty significantly.
Ruby Rentería, a sophomore at New Mexico State University, was in middle school when the quarantine first hit and says that online school was more convenient for her because she had more “free time to do other stuff,” and she hasn’t had another experience like that where she didn’t have to focus all of her attention on school.
She shared that quarantine gave her time to develop her style and learn more about herself, although she says she feels like she wasted a lot of time on her phone.
“I was definitely at my lowest, and I was just 14. Yes, I had more time to talk with my friends, but it was all online so there was a big gap between us,” Rentería said. “It made me more afraid to go back to school because I became more anti-social.”
Students’ experience with online school during the pandemic encouraged a larger number of students to register for online-based classes only. UNM states that the fall semester of 2024 had 3,530 students registered solely online, a 70% increase from the 2,480 students who were enrolled in 2019, according to an analysis from College Factual.
Online courses are helpful for busy student schedules — especially considering that most students are employed — involved in extracurricular activities or have other important responsibilities in their lives aside from attending university.
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A study published in the International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning about incentives for students earning a degree through online classes found that “convenience and flexibility were the primary motivations for students who chose online courses at East Oregon University,” where the study was conducted.
Disparities affecting accessibility to technology was a recurring issue that needed to be addressed during quarantine, and many schools had to locate the funding to accommodate students so that they could access technology.
In 2021, the Federal Communications Commission established a plan to accommodate households who needed help affording internet access. Families who qualified were able to receive $50-$75 a month.
This also gave a new insight to educators about students, and the complications they face as individuals when they are outside of school, including their mental health.
Seeking treatment for mental health became normalized following the pandemic, because many people took time during quarantine to reassess and better-understand mental health overall.
In a 2024 study published by Heliyon, a health and social science journal, an analysis of over 50,000 responses to the National Health Interview Survey found that Americans were more likely to seek mental healthcare after the pandemic than before, from 20% in 2019 to 23.31% in 2022.
Holtz explains that telehealth appointments became more frequent as a result of the pandemic.
“Because people are busy and, you know, have other constraints right? So I think that has also shifted how we approach mental health treatment, in some ways, to make it more acceptable,” Holtz said.
She also says there are many options for anyone who would like to seek assistance with their mental health, like group meetings, online sessions, mindfulness apps or speaking with a therapist on occasion.
"Therapy may look a little different, it’s not always long sessions,” Holtz says.
The difference in how mental health has been perceived and treated by society has progressed since the pandemic, and is now something that is more normalized and respected than before the pandemic. Holtz says that she is “optimistic” that this acceptance will continue.
Lexis Lovato is a beat reporter with the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at culture@dailylobo.com or on X @lovatolexis
