At least we’ve not got dysentery!!
Every so often the same tweet resurfaces on my timeline. A user, aged between 20 and 29, asks the hive mind for reassurance, wondering if their inability to “get it together” in their twenties – to find the right career, to get into a non-toxic relationship, to make ends meet, to survive impending climate catastrophe, to drink enough water – is a marker of their own individual failing or a shared plight. Invariably, the replies reach across the generational divide to provide support and understanding: no, it’s not just you. Why does it feel like we are consistently taking the wrong turn? Is our generation particularly blighted, or is there something inherent to being in your twenties that just… really sucks?
This anxiety to “get it together” in early adulthood is not unique to this generation. It’s a worry I’ve heard echoed by many before me, from friends to siblings to my own parents. In her 1963 novel The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath famously wrote of being paralysed by choice as she likens all the potential path her life could follow to figs on a tree: “I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose.” In the 1994 post-grad anxiety movie Reality Bites, Winona Ryder’s character Lelaina reflects in her valedictorian speech, “What are we going to do now? How can we repair all the damage we inherited?” (Her best friend Vickie later tells a depressed Lelaina: “Man, you’re in the bell jar.”)
However, it seems today’s 20-somethings are finding this entrance into adulthood particularly trying. Coming of age amid financial and climate collapse and a global pandemic has not helped today’s young people feel secure in our future: recession hit a 40-year high in 2022, and around half of UK Gen Z and millennials struggle with the rising cost of living. According to The Princes’ Trust “Class of COVID” report published in 2022, 49 per cent of 16 to 25-year-olds feel anxious about their future on a daily basis.
Lucie*, 26, who now works in publishing, graduated in the summer of 2020 and found it difficult to find a job as many businesses were either closed or not hiring during the pandemic. “[It] feels like I blinked and was suddenly in my mid-twenties. I feel like I’ll be 30 before I know it and I’m still not finished processing the fallout of the last few years.”
Traditionally, several specific milestones have signified a person’s transition into adulthood: a dream job, a house, a steady relationship – whatever will make our maturity legible by society. “We are consistently told that we are failing, that we are late at hitting milestones. But there are things that are expected of us that we can’t afford,” says Erin, 29, a visual artist based in Scotland. While employee earnings for a full-time job have fallen by 2.6 per cent in April 2022, both rental prices and the cost of a home have risen, with property now up to 9.1 times a buyer’s earnings – compared to just 3.5 in 1997.
‘As a generation, we are consistently told that we are failing, that we are late at hitting milestones. But there are things that are expected of us that we can’t afford’ – Erin, 29
It’s hard to believe, when on the surface, our generation has arguably had more opportunities than those before us. “For example, women couldn’t open a bank account by themselves in the UK until 1975, my mother was eight years old at that point. We do not have to get married to have security. We have opportunities to delay or refuse milestones because society has become more progressive,” Erin adds. “But capitalism makes it more difficult if you want to pursue these.”
The bleak realities of being a young adult in the UK have fed into the rise of relentless self-improvement culture which pervades social media. With material stability becoming increasingly inaccessible to young people, and the expectations of our future growing more uncertain, there is a newfound urge to combat this anxiety from within. We talk casually about boundaries and healing in conversations, more and more medical professionals join TikTok, and podcasts give us discount codes for online therapy. Our twenties are now a pursuit of an impossible emotional maturity, an unshakeable self-knowledge to withstand the rest of our lives unmoved.
But this obsession with emotional wellness has more to do with vigilance than it has to do with genuine wellbeing. The more powerless we grow to our external circumstances, the tighter the grips of optimisation become, until we have optimised everything down to our interior lives. Learning coping strategies is useful, healing our trauma is important, but the pressure should never be solely on us to consolidate our mental resilience when young people increasingly struggle with the cost of food and basic essentials, and one in three do not earn enough to cover their rent.
@lucy_freemanx It’s just life 🙄 #stress #twenties # #lonliness #growingup ♬ yelena belova needs a hug - eliza! 🎧
As control over our external circumstances continue to escape us beyond what we could have ever predicted, it is attractive to believe that all that stands between us and emotional peace is our individual capacity to “do the work”. “Self-help and wellness discourse is particularly appealing to those experiencing situational vulnerability,” says Dr Stephanie Alice Baker, senior lecturer in sociology at City, University of London and author of Wellness Culture. “The pandemic was a difficult time for many. It makes sense in these circumstances that people would turn to the internet and to influencers for comfort and support.”
After being stuck with online therapy during the pandemic, Lucie felt a bit disillusioned “with the concept of therapy and the online pressure to have a ‘therapy journey’.” While she sees her generation’s interest in mental health as a positive, she also warns of its individualistic stance. “It’s really good to see people having more ‘tools’ to cope with their feelings, but it can sometimes end up being more about ‘protecting your peace’ by refusing to take criticism, rather than building more open and collaborative relationships with the people around us.”
So much as we want to believe that we owe each other nothing but our firmly set boundaries, this rhetoric hurts us all. It’s tempting to believe that the solution is an individual one – that if only we find the correct therapy and journaling template we can escape the dread. The very experience of growing up, of becoming an adult, of being human, will always be a complicated one. It is messy and unpredictable. But it sure would be easier if we had the material means for stability and safety we need to fully come into ourselves – debt-free education, accessible housing, affordable energy.
In the meantime though, I promise that your twenties are not a timed assignment. There is no project brief for you to be evaluated on. That reminder alone won’t push the doomsday clock back, but it beats the apathy to do nothing about it.
*Name has been changed