Yes, Mental Health in Your 20s is About More Than Having a Job
Satya Doyle Byocksatyadoylebyock.substack.com
Yes, Mental Health in Your 20s is About More Than Having a Job
I have watched smart, interesting twentysomethings avoid “real jobs” in the “real world” only to drag themselves through years of underemployment, all the while becoming too tired and too alienated to look for something that might actually make them happy. Later, such work is even harder to find.
Meg Jay • The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now
Young Adults Are in Crisis - The Atlantic
Faith Hill • Young Adults Are in Crisis — The Atlantic
Salman Ansari added
Young adults are the ones most in crisis. Even Richard Weissbourd, who led the study in 2022, was taken aback. His team found that 36 percent of participants ages 18 to 25 reported experiencing anxiety and 29 percent reported experiencing depression—about double the proportion of 14-to-17-year-olds on each measure. More than half of young adults were worried about money, felt that the pressure to achieve hurt their mental health, and believed that their lives lacked meaning or purpose. Teenagers and senior citizens are actually the two populations with the lowest levels of anxiety and depression, Weissbourd’s research has found.
Who could blame young adults for thinking that work is fake and meaningless if we prescribe fake and meaningless work for the first two decades of their existence? By confining meaningful work to an adult-only activity, it is little wonder that adolescence is a period of great depression. It would be surprising if it was not. Even for smart childre... See more
Simon Sarris • The Most Precious Resource is Agency
When I have nothing but time for more than six months or so, my depression soars. My anxiety about money is through the roof. And the pressure to make something out of each day, when all I’m really doing is writing little words on my little Word Doc, words that people may never see and I may never get paid for—all while convincing myself, in the se
... See moreEmily J. Smith • Unpacking the “Day Job”
Keely Adler and added
One of the saddest predicaments of the current millennial moment is feeling desperate for something that isn’t work, but having no clue how do figure out what else there is.
Shreya Dalmia added
It is an old compulsion to try to impose a narrative on our lives, especially when looking for meaning in our existence. But life does have a natural progression, a natural flow that Millennials ought to have simply participated in, and many feel it’s not flowing as it should.
Many felt there were certain things that should have fallen into place by... See more
Many felt there were certain things that should have fallen into place by... See more
Bride Jabour • ‘A late blooming into misery’: why Millennials are unhappy
owl added
amongst the reasons i've theorised, the ubiquity of media (specifically, nostalgia-driven and self-referential media), where no one seems to age or "mature”(whatever that means). the other side of the theory involves, of course, capitalism. the oppressive conditions that might lead us to turn inward, seek distraction and perform a "simpler” time perpetually— to willingly blind ourselves to the crippling realization that we grew into a world much more hostile than any previous generation had to face. i miss vine, btw. dab and all that.
Twentysomething jobs teach us about regulating our emotions and negotiating the complicated social interactions that make up adult life. Twentysomething work and school are our best chance to acquire the technical, sophisticated skills needed in so many careers today. Twentysomething relationships prepare us for marriage and other partnerships. Twe
... See moreMeg Jay • The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now
When I was in my twenties, thinking about what to do with my life, nothing (within reach) felt meaningful: I felt alienated, bored, and millennially troubled by every line of work I encountered or knew of. This was a lack of imagination on my side—I’ve known that for a while now. But I had a few experiences recently that made me realize just how ve... See more