Why so many people still feel stuck in the ‘COVID pause’

As the COVID-19 pandemic wound down, people began reflecting on the strange way it had warped their sense of time.

The feeling became known as “the pandemic skip”: the sense of having lost milestones and experiences while life was on hold.

Five years later, the sensation persists, now rebranded as the “COVID pause.”

“I still feel like I felt when COVID started,” one TikTok user said. “I don’t feel like I aged.” Though nearing 38, she explained that she still feels more like the 32-year-old she was when the lockdowns began.

Others echoed the sentiment. “COVID stole my 20s. I’m gonna be 29 soon and I still feel like I’m 23 when covid started, or even about to be 26?” one person wrote.

Another added, “I turned 33 this year and I still feel like I’m in my late 20s.”

A third summed it up: “Yup. Total time warp.”

On Reddit, one user described the transformation more starkly: “going in the pandemic I was a kid and when it was over I was an adult working a nine-to-five.” They wondered whether the COVID-19 pause was “real or are people just making up something new?”

Psychologists sometimes use the term “arrested development” to describe being stuck at the emotional age when a trauma or stressor occurred. In this case, that trauma was the pandemic. With education, careers, relationships, and independence all disrupted, many feel those formative years were stolen.

Whether it’s arrested development or a kind of Peter Pan syndrome, the result is the same: minds and bodies feel out of sync.

“The COVID pause is so real,” said a TikTok user. But he offered a silver lining: “It took so much away from us that we’re no longer ashamed of doing certain things,” like “dancing on camera on TikTok.”