Take a gap year and do what, exactly? Sitting around your parents' house for a year is probably worse than getting the coronavirus, for an 18 year old. Maybe much worse.
As an 18-year-old, exactly this. Even with the lackluster online classes I am getting, sitting at home is unproductive, uninteresting, and just mentally exhausting. The primary thing I looked forward to in college is independence. Even if my parents completely laid off for the year, I would still feel judged for every decision I made.
You could work on personal projects. I am a college student too, currently at my parent's home and writing a experimental debugger. Under the usual workload, it's hard to find free time like this; everyone should use this opportunity to better themselves (unless they are impacted directly by the virus, or ciritically affected by the economic downturn).
If you're unproductive, that seems more like a personality thing vs a being 18 thing. There's hobbies, things 6i can learn, pick up new skills, exercise and get healthy, learn to cook, start a business, etc.
18-year-old here, heavily considering a gap year. I've already got a job at a cybersecurity firm as a developer, and would continue working there. It's a start-up, so I've gotten to work on many different things and build skills in lots of different places. I've worked on projects to build skills throughout high school; I'd continue working on those. I'd have more time to focus on learning "real things" vs. padding my accomplishments for college admissions. Finally, I've got lots of non-profit work to continue. It sounds much more compelling than paying $75k/year for "zoom university".
If you already have a decent job, the 3-4 years of extra real-world experience will likely put you much further ahead than college would. I wouldn't waste so much money and time on it given your position regardless of covid.
Back in the day, HP hiring used to value a Masters' Degree as 1 year of experience. And a Master's Degree took 2 years. So they made in explicit: get out of school and get a job.
One of the most valuable things I did during college was to "eat" documentation wholesale. I read absolutely everything I could get my hands on, and also played around with a few toy projects.
This turned out to be more useful than 80% of what I learned in college.
I really wish I took a gap year at that age to learn new skills. For instance I went to school for mechanical engineering but I would have loved to have learned programming back then. It was always on my to do list but never had enough time. If I had done it then, I probably would have received a degree in CS or IT instead.
Even for my friends that went for CS, they also said they would have loved to have had more time to apply and actually create things vs just learning theoretical/ engineering side of things in school.
Or for instance my brother if he took off from school he would have had the chance to go pro in the MLS, but it was too big of a risk to put off school at the time. Not that sports are happening now, but just gives a more diverse view.
A more HN example would be to create a business or side hustle.