“The Earth Is Becoming a Coronavirus”: Children’s Perceptions, Knowledge, and Experiences of the COVID-19 Pandemic as Presented in Their Drawings
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Younger children’s voices are often overlooked in research and policy, yet their perceptions and experiences are crucial in understanding their needs in planning responses to crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Existing studies on children’s experiences of crises often rely on adult perspectives or are adult-led; a more child-centric approach could be to analyze children’s drawings. The aim of this study was to explore Swedish 7- to 11-year-old children’s experiences and knowledge of the COVID-19 pandemic, as expressed in their drawings. Drawings from N = 454 children with accompanying texts, from various Swedish municipalities with different socio-economic profiles, were analyzed using a combination of semiotic visual analysis and content analysis. Three main themes emerged: (a) Fun, friends, and freedom are cancelled which pointed to societal changes as a result of the pandemic that impacted the children’s own lives, causing high levels of frustration; children saw contrasts between what had been, what is, and what is to come; (b) The world is all upside down , in which the children highlighted their understanding of the virus, how it has changed and impacted the world, as well as existential reflections of their lives and surrounding environment; and (c) The Virus: evil, scary, and dangerous, but masks and sanitizer can help showed the children’s understanding of the pandemic as a global event and showed high level of health literacy related to COVID-19. Children were very perceptive and astute to the societal issue at hand. Despite Sweden’s relatively lenient measures, the pandemic significantly affected their lives and autonomy.
Source: Qualitative Health Research
Authors: Sofia Gjertsson, Maria Thell, Anna Sarkadi
Institution: Uppsala University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $4,400
Award: G3815437008
OpenAlex ID: W4409837088