A small experiment about feeling behind
In 2014, a team led by Erin Vogel asked people to look at a social media profile. Some saw a profile of someone who seemed to be doing better. Others saw one of someone doing worse. Afterwards, the first group rated themselves lower in that moment (Vogel and others, 2014).
That is the whole idea of this article in one small test. Most of us carry a quiet scoreboard in our heads, and I call it the comparison scoreboard. It tracks house, partner, career and money, and it says everyone your age is winning. The score is rigged, because you only see the other person's best moments. And the pain it causes is not useless. It points at where you still want to change things.
Why do I feel like I wasted my 20s?
Nobody hands you a ruler for a life. There is no exam that says whether you are doing well at 29 or at 34. So your mind grabs the nearest ruler it can find, which is the people your age. You did not choose it. It was just lying around.
The trouble is that the test is unfair. You see your friend's promotion, engagement and kitchen. You do not see the three unhappy years before it, or what the kitchen cost. You are comparing your whole life, doubts and dull days included, with their best moments.
Alfred Adler, an early psychologist, built much of his thinking on a related idea. He coined the term "inferiority feeling" and argued that it can push people to build their skills. It becomes a problem when the push turns defensive. Instead of "I want to get better at this," the thought becomes "I am worse than everyone," and the energy goes into hiding or ranking yourself against others.
There is a second layer that people rarely say out loud. "I wasted my 20s" is a verdict about the past that quietly protects you from the present. If the decade is gone and nothing can be done, you are excused from starting. It feels like grief, but it often works like an alibi.
What the research says about feeling behind
I checked every paper below against its abstract before using it. Where a finding is only a link and not proof of cause, I say so.
Regret points at where change still looks possible. In 2005, Roese and Summerville asked what people regret most. They combined 11 studies that ranked regrets, and the six biggest were education, career, romance, parenting, the self and leisure. The interesting part is their explanation. People regret most in the areas where they see the largest opportunities, meaning real chances for change, growth and renewal. So if your career stings, that sting suggests part of you still believes things can move.
Over a lifetime, the things we don't do hurt more. Gilovich and Medvec (1995) reviewed the evidence on regret over time. Actions cause more regret in the short term, but inactions cause more in the long run. Think of the class you never signed up for. A clumsy first attempt fades, while a project you never began tends to stay with you. That is a strong argument against waiting until you feel ready.
Scrolling through other people's lives can dent how you see yourself. Vogel, Rose, Roberts and Eckles (2014) ran two studies. In the first, people who used a social media site most often reported lower self-esteem, and the link ran through how much they compared themselves upward. That study only shows a link, so it cannot prove the site caused the drop. The second was an experiment. People who viewed a profile with signs of someone doing better showed lower self-esteem in that moment than people who viewed a profile with signs of someone doing worse. So looking at someone ahead of you can lower how you rate yourself, at least for a while.
The 20s were never a deadline. In 2000, Arnett proposed a stage he called "emerging adulthood," running from the late teens through the twenties. It is a time of trying out identities. He also noted that this stage exists only in cultures that give young people a long stretch to explore their roles. So even the exploring years are tied to culture, not to a fixed human clock.
Your personality is not set by 30. This is a popular myth, and the evidence points the other way. Roberts, Walton and Viechtbauer (2006) pooled 92 samples. They found that people tend to grow in conscientiousness, emotional stability and social dominance, especially in young adulthood, from age 20 to 40. Of six trait groups, four also showed significant change in middle and old age. That is average change, and it does not promise you will transform. But the idea that you are fixed at 30 has no support in it.
One honest note. None of these studies measured "wasted 20s" directly. I am joining the dots from the abstracts, and the dots point the same way.
What to try: four steps to fix the scoreboard
None of this needs a new personality. It needs four small, plain steps.
- Name the ruler. Write down who you are comparing yourself to. Pick three or four real people, not "everyone". Next to each, write one thing you know about their life that does not show on their profile. The scoreboard tends to fall apart once it has names on it.
- Cut the feed. The 2014 experiment suggests a look at someone doing better is not harmless. Mute or unfollow the three accounts that reliably leave you feeling worse. You do not have to quit. You just stop feeding the ruler.
- Follow the regret. Take the area that hurts most, such as work, love or friends. The regret research says the pain points at where change still looks possible. Pick the smallest version, like one application sent, one message to an old friend, or one evening class booked.
- Judge by direction. Ask whether you are further along than a year ago, in any one thing. Adler's idea of striving is about moving on from where you are, not about outranking anyone. Then swap "I wasted my 20s" for something closer to true, like "I spent my 20s learning things the slow way, and I'm starting from here."
If the low mood has lasted for weeks, or you ever think life is not worth living, please talk to a doctor, a therapist or a local crisis line. I studied clinical psychology, but I am not your therapist, and some weights are too heavy to carry alone.
For everyone else, here is what I would do tonight. Open your calendar and book one hour this week, with a name next to it, for the area where the regret is loudest. Don't plan the decade. Just spend the hour. Once you have done it, the scoreboard you were losing on will look like the wrong measure, and you will have a data point of your own.
In short
- Feeling behind is common, and it comes from comparing your whole life with other people's best moments.
- Looking at someone who seems ahead can lower how you rate yourself, even after a few minutes.
- Regret is strongest where you see real chances for change, so it can work as a map.
- Over a lifetime, the things we never tried hurt more than the things we tried badly.
- Your twenties were never a deadline, and personality keeps changing well past 30.
Sources
Alfred Adler. (n.d.). In Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alfred-Adler
Arnett, J. J. (2000). Emerging adulthood. A theory of development from the late teens through the twenties. American Psychologist, 55(5), 469-480. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10842426/
Gilovich, T., & Medvec, V. H. (1995). The experience of regret: what, when, and why. Psychological Review, 102(2), 379-395. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295x.102.2.379
Roberts, B. W., Walton, K. E., & Viechtbauer, W. (2006). Patterns of mean-level change in personality traits across the life course: a meta-analysis of longitudinal studies. Psychological Bulletin, 132(1), 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.1.1
Roese, N. J., & Summerville, A. (2005). What we regret most... and why. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31(9), 1273-1285. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167205274693
Vogel, E. A., Rose, J. P., Roberts, L. R., & Eckles, K. (2014). Social comparison, social media, and self-esteem. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 3(4), 206-222. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000047