Perhaps this is the true travesty of “social” media: the damage it has done to the social lives of young people just when they need others the most. - Meg Jay

I feel like I’m in the middle of the ocean. Like I could swim in any direction but I can’t see land on any side so I don’t know which way to go. I feel like I just have to keep hooking up and see what sticks. I didn’t know I’d be crying in the bathroom at work every day. The twentysomething years are a whole new way of thinking about time. There’s this big chunk of time and a whole bunch of stuff needs to happen somehow. My sister is thirty-five and single. I’m terrified that’s going to happen to me. I can’t wait to be liberated from my twenties. I’d better not still be doing this at thirty. Last night I prayed for just one thing in my life to be certain.

Goals direct us from the inside, but shoulds are paralyzing judgments from the outside. Goals feel like authentic dreams while shoulds feel like oppressive obligations. Shoulds set up a false dichotomy between either meeting an ideal or being a failure, between perfection or settling. The tyranny of the should even pits us against our own best interests.

With all the attention paid to the urban tribe, however, many twentysomethings have limited themselves to huddling together with like-minded peers. Some are in almost constant contact with the same few people. But while the urban tribe helps us survive, it does not help us thrive. The urban tribe may bring us soup when we are sick, but it is the people we hardly know — those who never make it into our tribe — who will swiftly and dramatically change our lives for the better.