Getting to the root of the issue, Meg realized that what these youngsters thought was ‘freedom’ was, in fact, fickleness, and due to no fault of theirs, they couldn’t tell the difference between the two. Meg Jay, a psychologist in the US, saw an unusually high inpouring of 20-something patients in her clinic, reporting symptoms of anxiety and depression while appearing to lead aspirational lives on the outside. This lifestyle looked glamorous in the movies and glitzy on our social media feeds, but the truth was very different.

The 20s suddenly became a trial run at life, where mistakes didn’t count and consequences could conveniently be brushed under the carpet. Instead of settling down in their twenties, this new generation of youngsters started devoting this time of their lives to ‘figuring things out’ - to develop new hobbies, meet different people, travel to various places, and jump jobs. But then came along the millennials, who brought about a paradigm shift.

Look at your own family history and you will see the pattern. In the generations gone by, most people got married in their early 20s and had kids soon after. As much as we roll our eyes at their constant fault-finding, some of those things are undeniably true – like our decisiveness in our twenties. The result is a provocative read that provides the tools necessary to take the most of your twenties, and shows us how work, relationships, personality, identity and even the brain can change more during this decade than at any other time in adulthood-if we use the time well.We’ve all heard our parents and grandparents draw comparisons between their generation and ours, claiming they were more hard-working, responsible, and devoted when they were younger. In The Defining Decade, Meg Jay argues that twentysomethings have been caught in a swirl of hype and misunderstanding, much of which has trivialized the most transformative time of our lives.ĭrawing from more than two decades of work with thousands of clients and students, Jay weaves the latest science of the twentysomething years with behind-closed-doors stories from twentysomethings themselves. Some say they are an extended adolescence. Our “thirty-is-the-new-twenty” culture tells us the twentysomething years don’t matter. Revised and reissued for a new generation, let it change how you think about you and yours. The Defining Decade has changed the way millions of twentysomethings think about their twenties-and themselves.

The defining decade by dr meg jay