'At skynde sig langsomt': Ungdomsliv, ventetid og pandemi

The COVID-19 pandemic deeply impacted the temporalities of children’s and young people’s everyday lives in the Nordic countries. Young people experienced the COVID-19 pandemic as a long wait requiring new ways of passing the time. The lockdown resulted in temporal deceleration in relation to children’s and young people’s active everyday lives. What do you do when you suddenly find yourself in a waiting position that can last days, weeks or even years? How do you organize time and find a rhythm in life? This article discusses waiting as a special temporal phenomenon and concept in youth research. The aim of the article is to develop new perspectives on waiting, focusing on young people’s everyday lives, temporal horizons, and images of the future. The article draws on anthropological studies of time/waiting, as well as empirical studies of the lives of children and young people during the pandemic. It explores a turbulent societal era in relation to the rhythm of the lives of young people.