How much did young people suffer from the COVID-19 pandemic? A growing number of studies address this question, but they often lack a comparison group that was unaffected by the pandemic, and the observation window is usually short. Here, we compared the 2-year development of life satisfaction of German high school students during COVID-19 (N = 2,698) with the development in prepandemic cohorts (N = 4,834) with a difference-in-differences design. We found a decline in life satisfaction in winter 2020/2021 (Cohen’s d = -0.40) that was approximately three times stronger than that in the general population and persisted until winter 2021/2022. Young people found some restrictions particularly burdensome, especially travel restrictions, bans on cultural events, and the closure of bars/clubs.

中文翻译：

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大流行的两年大大降低了年轻人的生活满意度：与 COVID-19 之前的面板数据比较的证据

新冠肺炎 (COVID-19) 大流行给年轻人带来了多少痛苦？越来越多的研究解决了这个问题，但它们往往缺乏未受大流行影响的对照组，而且观察窗口通常很短。在这里，我们采用双重差分设计将德国高中生在 COVID-19 期间 (N = 2,698) 的生活满意度的两年发展情况 (N = 2,698) 与大流行前群体 (N = 4,834) 的发展情况进行了比较。我们发现 2020/2021 年冬季生活满意度下降（Cohen's d = -0.40），下降幅度约为一般人群的三倍，并持续到 2021/2022 年冬季。年轻人发现一些限制特别繁重，尤其是旅行限制、文化活动禁令以及酒吧/俱乐部关闭。