Having fun might be high up on the agenda for lots of 20-somethings, but it’s a decade which brings with it a lot of pressure; making that transition into ‘proper’ adulthood, getting feet in doors, a salary in the bank and, these days, an impressive number of followers and ‘likes’ on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
Psychologist Dr Linda Papadopoulos has written a new book, Whose Life Is It Anyway? Living through your 20s on your own terms, to guide young people through the potential pitfalls of this life-changing decade.
And while it’s predominantly a guide for today’s 20-something women, it’s a pretty great read for those beyond 30, too. Here are some of the cross-generational lessons she teaches us…
Stop trying to impress
No one can deny that social media has brought a wealth of benefits. But, there are downsides, and one of these is a skewed sense of identity.
“Social media doesn’t only make you more aware of what everyone else is doing, but it makes you aware of how other people perceive you,” says Papadopoulos.
“The whole clap-o-meter set up – whether you’re being retweeted or liked or poked – there’s a sense that what’s reinforced is a certain image that others should have, or you’d like them to have, of you.
“As a consequence, I’m increasingly seeing young people who feel that their identities need to correspond to what they perceive as being valued by others around them and not ideals that have developed in terms of what they value intrinsically.”
Don’t constantly worry how you measure up
Being so constantly aware of what everybody – ourselves included – is up to, and how well it’s going down with others in the online realm, also means we’re under a “constant surge of self-evaluation”, notes Papadopoulos.
“It’s almost as though you have your own little headmaster on your shoulder, giving you a report card on everything you do,” she explains.
“And when we’re self-evaluating, what are we doing – we’re standing outside ourselves looking in, right? If you constantly live by seeing yourself in the third person, as it were, then you’re never really experiencing anything first hand.
“You’re having this great meal, but instead [of just enjoying it], you’re thinking, ‘What’s the right selfie? What’s the right hashtag?’”
There’s a real danger in pegging too much of our self-worth on how well our lives are presented, and responded to, online, and Papadopoulos thinks this may be part of the reason we’re seeing a rise in anxiety and depression, and “this kind of existential angst that I used to see a lot more in 40-year-olds, I’m seeing in 25-year-olds now”.
Just eat the cupcake…
By becoming hooked on parading our lives online, are we in danger of forgetting how to savour the moment? Papadopoulos certainly thinks so.
“It used to be, ‘I think, therefore I am’. Now it’s, ‘I tweet, or I post therefore I am!’ You know, unless somebody else sees that I’ve done this then it doesn’t really count!,” she says.
“There was an amazing talk given by a professor in America, and he spoke about climbing a mountain – not for people to see you climbing it, but so you could see the view. What a beautiful way of putting it,” she adds. “Climb the friggin’ mountain! Eat the cupcake – just do it! You don’t need a ‘well done you’ badge.
“When you start doing things just for you, I think you do connect, not only with the world around you but also with your own passions, and I think that’s key for knowing who you are, what p*sses you off, what makes you happy…”
Lift some of this pressure
Another topic Papadopoulos discusses in the book is how obsessed we’ve become with becoming successful quickly.
“We perpetuate this idea that success is super easy; ‘Oh my gosh, I’m a millionaire, it took me 10 minutes to write this app’, and, ‘Oh I’ve gone on The X Factor and now I’ve got all this…’”
She doesn’t believe that success has become easier – just that it’s sold to us that it’s easier. “Because of how we celebrate it,” she adds. “I was in my local book store and I can’t tell you how many autobiographies there are – so many! Imagine you’re 20 and you’re thinking, ‘I don’t have an autobiography-worthy life yet!’ And then there are all these lists; you know, 30 billionaires under 30.”
Write your own script
Just because certain things may seem like the norm now, what ‘everybody does’, it doesn’t mean we have to go along with them.
“You can rip up the script that says happiness comes in one shape and size, or happiness comes once you’ve reached x amount of followers, or once you’ve ticked this box, you can do that,” says Papadopoulos.
“And, oh my God – stop comparing yourself! We need to keep in mind that, just like photos in magazines are airbrushed, with social media, we airbrush our lives too.”
Whose Life Is It Anyway? Living through your 20s on your own terms by Dr Linda Papadopoulos is published by Piatkus, priced £13.99.
