Is it weird to feel lonely in your twenties?
Let's admit it: most of us have probably felt this way
As a teenager, I really looked forward to my twenties. I loved shows like Broad City and Girls which followed the messy, fun exploits of young women around that age. I was excited to go to bars with my friends, drive a car, and have my own place. Compared to the mundane routines of school and university, being a twenty-something seemed like a never-ending choose your own adventure - a new happy hour each night, a fun outing each weekend.
I was well-aware of the exhilarating independence and new opportunities that were supposed to come with being in your twenties. But I didn’t really know about the other side of that coin: the profound loneliness and confusion that often also accompany those years. So when I first experienced those things, I was convinced that there was something uniquely wrong with me. I was living in sunny San Francisco, working in a well-paying job, making friends with many of the other 20-something new hires. Everything was set for me to have the time of my life, surely?
Yet between late nights at the office and weekends spent alone, I somehow couldn’t shake off feelings of loneliness and purposelessness. Before you dismiss me as a whiny young person, it turns out that my feelings were anything but unusual. In 2020, a Harvard study found that 61% of people aged 18-25 reported feeling profoundly lonely, more than any other age group - a finding that surprised the authors of the study themselves. This tendency was prevalent before the pandemic too: a 2018 study by the Office of National Statistics in the UK found that people aged 16 to 24 were over three times more likely to report frequently feeling lonely compared to people aged 65 and over.
Feeling lonely in your twenties is a surprisingly common experience, yet one that doesn’t really fit into the narrative of the carefree, adventurous “best time of your life” that your twenties are supposed to be. None of the twenty-something protagonists in my favorite TV shows moped around their apartments feeling like they had no one to talk to, or worried about feeling lost and aimless (granted, that would probably make for pretty boring TV). Social media always made it look like everyone else was having more fun. In other words, there was no cultural narrative to help me understand and reconcile my feelings.
I thought I must have gone wrong somewhere, when in reality I was experiencing a very common part of being twenty-something. I’m sure many of my friends felt the same way. There’s a paradox at play here: we all think we’re alone in our loneliness, despite the fact that most twenty-somethings experience it in some form, because no one wants to admit to feeling that way. Culturally, we tend to associate loneliness with elderly people living by themselves. Acknowledging that you feel lonely in your twenties still feels stigmatizing somehow, like admitting to having awkwardly stood in the corner at a party where everyone else was having fun. It’s not a sexy confession to make.
There’s a myriad of reasons for why we feel lonely in our twenties, and my personal experience only covers a small portion of them. We get swamped with more responsibilities and socializing falls lower on the priority list. We move away from home and friends for the first time, or move out of environments that provide more structured settings to socialize, like school or university. We feel alienated at work. We don’t have the money or the time to hang out. Of course, I can’t forget to mention the root cause of all our social ills: technology and social media, which encourage us to invest more time in virtual and parasocial connections instead of in-person ones.
There’s a lot of work that needs to be done to fully understand, deconstruct, and reverse these trends that contribute to our loneliness. But the first step might be to acknowledge that you’ve felt it too, even if it feels weird and uncool to admit it. I’m not saying we should normalize loneliness in the sense of accepting it as a given, but understanding just how common feeling lonely in your twenties really is might help other people going through it feel less, uh, alone in their feelings.
Our collective loneliness is awkward, yes - but it also provides a shared experience to bond over, which can be funny and evocative at times. Georgia Lawton’s candid portrayal of dating in your twenties made me cackle because I know exactly what she’s talking about, and I bet you do too:
“The best Tinder dates don’t include the admission that you are only there because you can’t bear another evening in alone, where your ability to balance both a takeaway box and your laptop on your stomach is your most Snapchat-worthy moment of the week. “I really love being independent!” you scream-cry to your date, while secretly dreading the prospect of going back to an M&S mushroom risotto for one.”
I nodded along in understanding to this Reddit thread, where users admitted to “imagin[ing] my life in early 20s would automatically be genuinely amazing with a close knit group of friends to celebrate and have fun and party and most importantly make intimate memories I would treasure” and feeling like a failure because “it’s like the whole world (everybody in your age) is having fun, is in love, or just enjoying the time of their life while I'm alone, not having fun at all, noone to love”. I enjoyed this reflection on not relying on dating and social media to fill the loneliness void and learning how to really put yourself out there.
Feeling lonely isn’t fun, and neither is admitting that you feel lonely. But I’ve found that being honest about my experiences and hearing others admit that they relate, or at least recognize what I’m talking about, has helped me feel less weird about it.
I know that part of the issue is personal: I’ll be the first to admit that I’m often shy and not very outgoing. If I really want to alleviate my loneliness and foster new connections, I have to make an effort to go out more and actually talk to people. But part of the issue is also undeniably structural, stemming from things like the decline of community spaces, the proliferation of social media, and an all-encompassing work culture.
Many, many of us experience this loneliness in our twenties in some form. Instead of continuing to pretend that this decade is always fun, social and carefree, I think we need to rewrite the societal script by talking more openly about how lonely our twenties can be in practice. And maybe then we’ll be able to take steps to actually change that reality.
Couldn’t agree more. I’m 24 and definitely experience these feelings from time to time when navigating my life. Have been spending significantly less time on social media these days and don’t plan on going back due to the noticeable improvements in mood and focus. I’ve been appreciating some of the new cultural representations of life in the twenties we’ve been receiving lately. Shows like “Hacks” and “Industry” on HBO or “Twenties” on BET.
So many good angles explored here. I also like to remind myself that being alone and being lonely aren't always the same thing for a little perspective. When I'm thinking about myself, I ask myself more questions about why I feel that way, or just a good reminder for when I'm looking at others' lives from the outside.
And I'm sure there's a conversation somewhere (outside of social media) about how friend groups have often been the subject of TV shows etc. and we still get dismayed about the fact that our friendship groups aren't anything like the ones shown.
Loved the research elements, great post :)