Real-time experiences of Hungarian youth in digital education as an example of the impact of pandemia. “I’ve never had better grades on average: I got straight all the time”

In this paper, we attempted to find an answer to the perceptions and experiences related to online education, with the help of the stories told, which can adequately indicate the epidemic's effects on the 15–29-year-old age group. The global pandemic events of 2020, 2021 and partly 2022, associated with digital education, may have profound and long-lasting effects on young people as a social group. However, we have only a few scientific findings contributing to assessing the COVID-19 pandemic's long-term effects on young people. The social listening analysis used during the research, precisely the so-called social listening method, the experiences and opinions of 15–29-year-olds related to online education were explored, and the perceived differences in competence in terms of infrastructural, educational organisation, and tool use. Young people's assessment of digital education is two-fold: positive attitudes are primarily related to the measurement/evaluation of student performance, negative ones to the effectiveness of the learning process, which has increased the value of face-to-face education, as well as the eroding effect of online school on social relations, and the difficulties related to the epidemiological regulations (mask-wearing, vaccination) or non-compliance (keeping a distance) were also reflected on. •We attempted to find answer to the perceptions and experiences related to online education, on the 15–29-year-old age group.•We used novelty method, a so-called social listening, to investigate young people's direct reactions to digital education.•Thousands of content items were read, coded, and textually analysed.