How teenagers' relationships with peers and adults have changed in the pandemic. The qualitative study.

Qualitative research allows researchers to define the world in which people live based on the experiences that they have, and the meanings assigned to these experiences (Ghoris 2016). In this direction the written narrative becomes a privileged way to explore autobiographical experiences in terms of thoughts, emotions, and feelings as well as affective meaning making (Pennebaker et al., 2003; Fioretti et al., 2020). We performed two qualitative studies in order to explore adolescents’ feelings and thoughts about how their relationships changed during the pandemic period: - Based on written autobiographical narratives we explored how preadolescents and adolescents’ family relationships changed during the lockdown (March-May 2020) - Based on written “sentences to complete” we explored from the inside how preadolescents and adolescents experienced affective closeness ad remoteness with peers and adults during the pandemic. Our research design was exploratory with the aim of understanding how adolescents were affected by the pandemic period starting from the experiences narrated in their own words.