As my 20th birthday looms over me, I feel pressure to fulfill the compulsory craziness of my early 20s before I can even legally drink.
When I was younger, especially as a teen, I longed for the freedom that I believed my 20s would grant me. Having spent nearly half of my high school years in quarantine, I was excited to come to college and make up for lost time.
However, it is no secret that UVM does not exactly live up to its reputation as a party school. The frats are ticketed, the bars are 21 and up and there exists an undeniable exclusivity with house and dorm parties.
Still, I won’t lie and say I haven’t experienced plenty of nights out and made many dumb decisions throughout college already, but I can’t help but feel that my time to have fun is fleeting.
My worries stem from observing older members of Gen Z. I have friends as young as 21 who believe their days of going out are over. I watch people on TikTok claim they would not be caught dead in a nightclub over the age of 24.
Obviously, blacking out every weekend is not the gold standard of being in your 20s, nor should it be. I do believe, however, that the embracing and romanticization of becoming a homebody reflects an overall trend of Gen Z acting older than they are.
The COVID-19 pandemic may have, in part, contributed to the lack of a Gen Z bar culture. Having spent so long in isolation, bars have become a source of intimidation rather than entertainment, according to an Oct. 16, 2024 article by Bon Appétit.
I loved watching 90s sitcoms growing up, especially “Friends” and “Seinfeld.” The ages of the characters in these shows always surprised yet comforted me, as they spend most of the show either in their late 20s or early 30s.
One of the main appeals of these shows is watching the characters navigate their early adulthood. Even when they fail, they make another attempt. Never does the show frame them as too old to involve themselves in hijinks.
Even now, when watching shows like “Sex and the City,” it shocks me that the main characters are in their 30s. Not because I think they’re too old, but because I already feel too old and I’m not even 20.
One of the reasons Gen Z seems to be adjusting to adult life so quickly may be due in part to the media we grew up watching. Shows like “Skins” and “Euphoria” showcased young teens excessively drinking and doing drugs.
Even Zendaya herself, the star of Euphoria, issued a warning about her show.
“Just a reminder before tonight’s premiere, that Euphoria is for mature audiences. It’s a raw and honest portrait of addiction, anxiety and the difficulties of navigating life today,” she stated in a June 16, 2019 Instagram post.
Despite this warning, many teens modeled the behaviors of the characters on these shows, which may have accelerated their desire to grow out of the experimental and transitional phases that make up our late teens and early 20s.
I acknowledge that having at least a little bit of existential dread upon entering a new decade of your life is normal, but the transition from wishing away my youth to clinging onto it feels jarring.
As I watch people only a few years older than me sink into their 9-to-5s, it appears that there is a specific timeline to life that entails having everything figured out by the time you graduate college.
As we all probably know by now, our prefrontal cortex, responsible for things like decision making and impulse control, does not fully develop until around the age of 25. However, this does not mean you need to have your whole life planned at 25.
This so-called “brain development” also does not mean that you no longer grow as a person beginning at midnight on your 25th birthday.
No studies have definitively proved that the brain stops developing at 25, according to an April 26, 2024 article from BBC Science Focus.
Life is messy and rarely linear. There is no magic age where life makes sense, and even if it feels like there is, something will inevitably make it confusing again—especially with the state of our world today.
When my mom was in her early 20s, she was still navigating a new life in a new country, learning a different language. My dad, who is currently a software salesman, had run off to L.A. under the belief that modeling was his calling.
Both of my parents assert that they had no idea what they were doing until they had my sister and me in their late 30s and 40s. Even now, they constantly face uncertainty in their lives, and that’s okay.
At the end of the day, we are all experiencing life for the first time, and there is no cookie-cutter way everyone needs to live it.
I know that I am by no means qualified, but my advice is to not feel like you need to settle into the mundane. Go out. Go have fun. Go make mistakes and learn from them.
