‘Twenty things that will make people in their twenties feel old’, says a post on Facebook. ‘Why do twenty-somethings always feel so old?’ asks a user on Quora. The Internet obsesses over how kids born in the new millennium may never understand the joy of rewinding a cassette tape or playing Super Mario on a beat-up old game console. The twenties are a tough time for anyone, and more so for the generation who has witnessed so much progress and then received Internet access to drive home each aspect of their ageing process.
“One of the things that has changed most since we were kids is how few youngsters play outside. We used to go cycling and play hide and seek in the streets and study together, but today these have been replaced by Whatsapp messaging and commenting on photos on social sites,” says Siddhhant Bohara, a 22-year-old entrepreneur and aspiring author. “The advantage we have, having lived before and during the social age, is that we have learnt to balance how much time we spend online and how we use it,” he adds.
Aditya Panja, a production assistant at a media firm, reminisces how communication and time spent with family has changed over the years. “When we were younger, there was more real communication, which has now been replaced by messages. And even food used to bind us together. Eating out was a family affair, with an outing with friends being occasional, nowadays it has become the opposite,” he says.
The endless lists that pop up on our social feeds are still conundrums for those in their twenties. There are guides about habits to learn, places to visit, and things to do before you turn 25. And then there is the new crisis that has become fashionable of late, the ‘quarter life crisis’, aimed at making people question whether they have done enough with their years. Sameera Nair, an IT professional, believes that while this has become a genuine thing, sometimes the web itself can be the solution to the problems it starts. “Recently, I came across an infographic that detailed how some of the most successful people in the world gained traction only after their twenties, and this is doing the rounds on social media. So while this seems to be the age that is targeted most online, there is also some relief to be found.”
This obsession with youth and the prime of life was once explained, in typical snarky fashion, by television host and comedian Craig Ferguson back in 2009, where he theorised that advertisers targeting the youth to create a long lasting clientele led to youth being celebrated, with society aspiring to look and feel young even as age catches up.
Relationships are another aspect of life that have become less personal nowadays, says Aditya, having lost the mystery that made them romantic. In a blog post he wrote a couple of weeks ago to sum up the nostalgia he feels for relationships in decades past, he mentions how his grandparents and parents met and fell in love, and how relationships from that age endure. “We learn so much about each other so quickly, and get to decide if the other person is indeed ‘the one’ or not, overnight,” he writes.
That is not to say these factors weigh on the minds of all people making their way through this age. When asked about things he missed about his childhood, Debojyoti Roy, an interaction designer at a consulting firm, made his priorities clear as he responded, “My Walkman.”
From spending evenings with friends and eating out with family to desperately trying to figure out love and life, twenty-somethings do not have it easy in this day and age, with the spotlight constantly turned upon them. And yet they forge their own path through the treacherous waters of the decade, only occasionally guilty of checking to see how many boxes they check in ‘25 things every man should know before he turns 25’.
