Emerging adulthood from the social service perspective during the COVID-19 pandemic: "example of online group work"

Proposed by American psychologist Jeffrey Jensen Arnett (1998), the concept of emerging adulthood covers the period between adolescence and adulthood (ages 18-25). The individual has developmental duties in this period, such as independence, identity exploration, and undertaking adult responsibilities. The sudden change in the life of young people during the pandemic and the necessity of adapting into the new order cause hardships for individuals to get through this period. Distancing from the social environment such as school, family, circle of friends, new order emerged in educational process, health anxiety, fear of risking their own environment, being unable to socialize or to spend the free time, in line with the measures taken during the pandemic, cause problems for young people to cope with the difficulties emerged within this period, with their anxiety levels having increased. Consequently, there is an increasing need for social service intervention into young people. This study focuses on the problems experienced by emerging adults who study at university during the pandemic period, and it is aimed to solve these problems by providing psycho-social support to young people through group-oriented social service intervention. The group work took place two days a week for a total of eight sessions. The "Psychological Resilience Scale" and the "Depression, Anxiety, Stress Scale" were applied before and after the group work, and the changes in the levels of depression, anxiety, stress and psychological resilience were observed by comparing the scores of the individuals. Considering the pre-test and post-test scores in the conducted study, the most positive change was seen in the levels of depression and anxiety. It was observed that the stress level was the least improved. Considering these data, it is thought that the reason why the stress level is still the area with the highest score despite a decrease in in the last tests is the continuation of the pandemic period, which is the cause of this stress to a great extent, and the implementation of full closure within the scope of the measures taken. In addition to these results, having evaluated the feedback given by the members to the group, it is understood that they benefitted from the group intervention. It is considered that online group work will be effective in reducing the problems young people experience during the pandemic process.