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Pulse Insights: Navigating change and isolation in your 20s
Natasha Faruqui, Healthcare Strategy at Peerakeet
Your twenties begin not with certainty, but with quiet. Groupchats thin out, friends disperse into different cities, jobs, versions of themselves. You scroll past promotions, solo trips, engagement announcements, and other soft launches of lives that appear fully formed. Meanwhile, you are still sitting in a childhood bedroom or half-furnished apartment, wondering why everything feels heavier than it should.
There is a particular sort of disorientation that settles in after graduation. When the schedules vanish and the closeness of a campus of people your age dissolves. With no one telling you where to be or who you are meant to become next, you are not unhappy exactly, but untethered. Even while doing the things you are supposed to be doing: applying, improving, working, trying. Yet the loneliness can still creep in, the quiet kind that exists even when your phone is full of notifications, because being connected is not the same as being known.
Pervasive loneliness has widespread effects and is strongly linked to mental health issues such as anxiety and depression; A 2020 report that examined loneliness in the workplace found that 79% of Gen Zers and 71% of Millennials considered themselves lonely, compared to 50% of Baby Boomers (Demarinis, 2020). In a report by Harvard Graduate School of Education, it was discovered that forty-four percent (44%) of young adults reported a sense of not mattering to others and 34% reported loneliness. Half of young adults reported that their mental health was negatively influenced by not knowing what to do with their lives (Weissbourd et al., 2023).
No one prepares you for the way your twenties feel like standing between two worlds, too old for the structures that once held you but also too new for the life you are attempting to build. You are expected to be happy, adaptable, ambitious, grateful, and resilient. But sometimes it can feel like everyone else received instructions you somehow missed. It is easy to mistake this feeling for failure. It is not. More often than not, it is a sign that you are changing.
Why this season feels lonely, and what to do with it:
- Resist the urge to rush
Growth creates distance before it creates belonging; we often outgrow people before we find new ones. As our post-grad lives develop, our values sharpen and our habits shift. Conversations that once sustained us start to feel misaligned, as though you are speaking a language you no longer share. It often feels as if the old life no longer fits, but this is only because the new one has not yet arrived. It is in that space that loneliness can take root, if we let it. Resist the urge to rush. This period is not about replacing people, but deepening your relationship with yourself. Learning to sit with who you are becoming makes room for the right connections to find you later.
- Begin to witness yourself
It often feels as if there is no audience for the discipline that comes with molding your young adult self. There is no recognition for the mornings you cook instead of ordering in and choose effort over ease or the evenings you limit your screen time and choose discomfort over distraction. In an age of doom-scrolling, when no one witnesses your progress, it can feel as though nothing is happening at all. In fact, heavy users of social media have been found to be more lonely as compared with light users (Demarinis, 2020). So, begin to witness yourself. Not all documentation needs to go to social media; write things down and mark your small wins. Just because your growth is not virtually published does not mean it is insignificant.
- Allow yourself to grieve the comfort of what once was
It is natural to miss your college friends, your old life, the comfort of your old routine, or even your parents. Even if these things may no longer serve you, nostalgia often trickles in when we least expect. Familiar habits and people carry a strange comfort, even when they may have kept you stuck. New ways of living require intention, and intention is tiring. Allow yourself the space to grieve. Reminiscing on the old version of yourself does not indicate regression, but instead a reflective honesty that allows you to move forward with intention. Understand why you miss this time and remember that feeling as you encounter new people and new places.
- Choose solitude with intention
In childhood and college, distraction often came naturally. For many of us, as the noise falls away, this may be the first time life has decelerated enough for us to be truly alone with our thoughts. When you are left alone with yourself, the silence brings thoughts you once avoided and emotions you’ve postponed. At first, this can be overwhelming. Try to find ways to choose solitude with intention. Journal without editing yourself. Take walks, yoga classes, or solo journeys to the movie theater. Learning to see solitude as a moment to be embraced gently rather than feared is a pivotal transition in this period of life. When treated with acceptance, it often becomes a form of grounding rather than isolation.
Why This Matters
Your twenties are about learning who you are when no one is watching; what calms you, what scares you, and what you truly want when others stop telling you who to be. Waiting for this click can feel like dangling in limbo between two versions of yourself, neither here nor there. The loneliness and stagnation you may feel now is not permanent, nor is it yours alone to bear. As you grow, you will find people who recognize the version of you that is emerging. And suddenly without fanfare, you will one day realize that the isolation has softened.
Until then, having spaces where you can feel heard matter. The digital transformation of our world has been shown to have influence on youth mental health in both directions: as a potential source of harm or decreased life satisfaction, but also as a new approach for prevention and intervention (Fegert et al., 2025). This is where Peerakeet exists; not as a solution to rush you forward, but instead as a place that acknowledges how isolating growth can be. A community grounded in mental health, reflection, and connection, where you are not expected to have everything figured out in order to belong. Peerakeet pairs users with others undergoing the same struggles and life transitions, providing space for connection to blossom, for the conversations that we never seem to have out loud. In turn, transitions become easier when you do not have to move through them alone. You are not late, you are not failing. You are becoming, and even when it feels lonely, it is exactly where you are meant to be.
References
Demarinis, S. (2020). Loneliness at epidemic levels in America. Explore (NY).
Fegert, J. M., Gottschalk, G., Schneider, R., Sitarski, E., Sounderajah, V., & Graham, G. (2025). Navigating life transitions and mental wellbeing in the digital age: A call for stakeholders to embrace innovation and collaboration. Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health.
Weissbourd, R., Batanova, M., McIntyre, J., Torres, E., Irving, S., Eskander, S., & Bhai, K. (2023). On Edge: Understanding and Preventing Young Adults’ Mental Health Challenges. Making Caring Common, Harvard Graduate School of Education.
https://mcc.gse.harvard.edu/reports/on-edge