Turkey’s choices for a post-COVID-19 society

The pandemic hit us all in various degrees. Some of us are just remaining at our homes getting bored out of our minds, but some people are losing their jobs, losing their houses, losing their health, losing their loved ones and some are losing their lives.

No doubt the pandemic is changing our lives. How can we understand these changes?

The easiest way to do that is to track what people are searching on the internet.

The greatest increase in search volume for the U.S. as of March 2020 is the word: Kids. The second one is seven-12 education. The sixth one is parenting. The other words which saw sharp increases are exercise, gaming, telecommunications, etc.

This means that people are rethinking about the core family. The core family is the most basic part of our societies. Therefore, I think that when the relations between the core family will be redefined, everything else will change. People are redefining basics.

They realized what a family is, when they had to spend more time with them. They realized the importance of making time for their kids. I believe that this situation, together with the realization that the way we live is not really sustainable, will change the way we live and work.

Many people will resist going to a working space. People will be looking for working from home, to use the freed commuting time for their loved ones.

I believe that technology will help build a new society.

What we really need to choose is in which way we will use technology. Are we going to choose the direction of China? Will we build a big brother state because it can effectively combat a pandemic or any other calamity? Or are we going to choose more freedom like South Korea or Germany?

The percentage of smartphones versus all phones in Turkey is 80 percent.

This shoots to 98 percent among those under 30 years old. Are we going to use these phones to label, track and monitor people, or are we going to use them to give more information to the public?

We have to make these choices during a stressful era, when we realized that we don’t even know how to be a parent. May we have the strength to choose wisely.