Roughly seven in ten Americans think young adults today have a harder time than their parents did when it comes to things like saving for the future (72%), paying for college (71%), and buying a home (70%), according to a survey by the Pew Research Center.
To get a better understanding of the possible struggles, Reddit user Raeraegoawayy asked everyone on the platform to share the “sad realities” of being a grown-up that they believe people entering adulthood should be aware of.
From thoughts on the daily grind to confessions about their health, continue scrolling to check out the replies.
#1
You can do everything right and it can still go wrong.
Image credits: crazyditzydiva
#2
The stupid s**t you do to your body adds up. Headphones at max volume? Enjoy your tinnitus. Being a goofball and head banging as hard as you can to Metallica in the 90s? Wake-up with neck pain. Showing off how much you can lift or carry and not lifting with your knees? Have fun with the back spasms after you move too quickly the wrong way.
Take it easy on your body.
Image credits: debaser64
#3
Your career can be ruined by other people through little fault of your own.
Image credits: tomqvaxy
#4
One sad reality is that life often doesn’t go as planned. Flexibility and resilience become essential skills for navigating adulthood.
Image credits: Cold-Tomatillo-414
#5
In my experience, the older you get the less people care. Until finally nobody cares. If you don’t put in the effort to reach out to people, nobody else will.
Image credits: 2Scarhand
#6
Time hits the FFW button after high school… it feels like January was last month sometimes. Next thing you know is been 10 years.
Image credits: eggz627
#7
That in the end, you need to be your own best friend and cheer squad. Only you can lift yourself up out of life’s inevitable potholes.
Image credits: Twilight_Waters
#8
You can prepare yourself as much as you want, life will always throw you a curve ball. Especially as an adult.
Image credits: Kusanagi60
#9
While you’re growing up, your parents are growing older.
Image credits: kyr038
#10
LIfe is a 1 player game. 1 Life…no checkpoints…Your experience stays with you. Treat people well, and they will remember you. Treat people badly, and they will never aid you again.
Image credits: jezzac_2000
#11
You can do pretty much anything you want, which is great, but you have to deal with the consequences, which isn’t great.
You can stay in bed all day and not work, but you will probably be broke. You can have a big party with your friends, but you have to pay for all the stuff and you have to clean up afterwards.
Basically, you have huge possibilities and opportunities, but it is all down to you.
Image credits: BobBobBobBobBobDave
#12
Not everything is black and white , most things are shades of grey.
Image credits: alladinsane65
#13
50 years I’m on this planet and I’m sitting here pondering what I can tell you that is a sad reality of being an adult. Nothing really springs to mind other than the daily grind of going to work. Do better in school and you can increase your prospects of having a job that you actually enjoy.
Image credits: Marybone
#14
People at work can be just as, if not more childish than those at school. Some folk just wait for the opportunity to stab you in the back or belittle you publicly.
Image credits: Slopsie
#15
Life is only better if you’re proactive about it. 80% of the time, people who are happy or unhappy are that way because of the decisions they make. You are responsible for your own happiness, and that’s a good thing.
Parents are no longer signing you up for sports or taking you on vacations. You gotta plan that s**t yourself. But now you get to choose what you do and when. Also, it’s your responsibility to enjoy your rest. It’s all in the mindset.
Image credits: Xelikai_Gloom
#16
That a lot of other adults, even ones that are younger than you, will try to out-adult you or make you feel like you aren’t an adult or basically inferior.
Whether you have a career or a job, the amount of years you work there is usually how old (or intelligent) your superiors will treat you, and that’s if you are lucky. (Ex. you work somewhere 2 years you get treated like a 2 year old, you work somewhere 30 years, you get treated like a grown up at a nursery home.)
Most other adults will try to judge your character and value based on where you work, how much you work, and/or how much spending power you have. They will put a lot of emphasis on this. They will only care if you are good person or not and your “inner beauty” or lack of it if they can use you and want to use you.
Not only can you not do whatever you want (there are a number of barriers like public sentiment, the law, the government, money, criminals, etc), but you are restricted on what you can do, and you can’t even do what you need to do sometimes. On top of that, a lot of burdens and responsibilities are placed on your shoulders suddenly.
To your town/city, county, state, country, continent, and the world, you only matter as a number. You don’t even make up a whole fraction of a percentage. On that scale, you might as well not even exists, and no, they don’t care about you. They do, however, care about your money and how it’s divided up and allocated. So, outside of your small circle, the only thing about you that matters is how much money you are receiving, spending, being stolen, and being collected.
#17
How lonely it feels. I’m 20, so i’m still in the transitioning period of becoming an adult, and sometimes it’s so lonely because this is where everyone’s life starts to go at different paces & in different directions. You start growing as a person & sometimes that means growing apart from friends you thought you’d be with forever.
Image credits: leapbaby00
#18
Nothing happens unless you make it happen! A blessing and a curse.
Image credits: bbybbuny078
#19
The advice of “Follow your passion” in careers only goes so far. If your passion happens to align with a lucrative career track, then you’re golden. But if it requires a TON of work to get your passions to make money, then keep them as a hobby. Get a job that you can tolerate to pay the bills, and do what you love for free because you love doing it. I wouldn’t say that data entry is my passion, but it gives me plenty of free time to rescue animals, garden and travel.
Image credits: ca77ywumpus
#20
People will dislike you and sabotage you for reasons that have nothing to do with you. Oftentimes you have only three choices – tolerate it, leave, or go to war.
Leaving is usually the best option.
#21
Adulting is mostly just being tired and doing laundry.
Image credits: kinkyxQueeny
#22
First, it goes by way faster than you think it will.
Old age doesn’t come on gradually. One day you’ll just be like, “Dude, I’m old. How the eff did that happen?”
Second, young people are awesome.
Forget all the stereotypes about self-centered, heartless, entitled youth. Young people have an innate ability to say to themselves, “Well, that didn’t work out. Oh well, let’s do something else.”
For young people, screwing up and trying something else, or doing something and realizing it isn’t for them, is a part of being young. At some point, we lose that when we get older.
Older people tend to wallow in their mistakes and feel like it’s too late to change. They feel trapped in their decisions and obligations.
Working with college students in my 50s, young people have taught me three very important lessons:
1. It’s OK to need help.
That’s what friends do. My experience has been that young people can be the most loyal and true friends of all.
2. Quit taking life so damn seriously.
There’s something funny about pretty much everything, so pull back, take a deep breath, and laugh.
3. It’s OK to change and do something else.
You make a mistake? You’re not dead! Do something else.
So my advice to young people is: respect youth, learn from them, and they’ll respect you back and teach you plenty.
And never lose the qualities I named above.
#23
Free time becomes a luxury.
Image credits: nastywhitecat290
#24
None of us have a clue what we’re doing or what’s going to happen or what we should actually do.
Image credits: TheAmazingSealo
#25
Life isn’t fair.
You can work harder, be better qualified, but still get passed over for promotion. You can be the perfect partner, but they can choose to drop you anytime.
#26
Life is more about how you react to things and less about what happens to you.
Good and bad things will happen in life. What matters is how you react to it.
Image credits: Oldrrider
#27
Everyone is very f*****g dumb.
Image credits: Other-Stomach1252
#28
You have all the freedom to stay up as late as you want and eat candy for dinner. But you’ll feel horrible if you do..
Also, dishes. So many f*****g dishes all the time.
Image credits: Suitable-Pie4896
#29
The way the world should work and the way that it actually does are sometimes very different things. Don’t confuse them.
For me, this was especially true in the workplace. Being good at what you do and willing to work hard sometimes isn’t what matters.
That said, people skills can be learned and improved upon.
Image credits: titianqt
#30
Remember when you were a kid and summer loomed large on the horizon? It took a while to get there but once you did, it was three months of glorious freedom, adventure, and comfortable boredom. When you’re an adult. You don’t get that anymore. You can look forward to your one or two five day vacations a year, or even just a measly three-day weekend, knowing that you’re going to pay the price when you get back to your job and have to catch up on everything that you missed. It’s an endless, plodding existence in cubicle-land. But maybe your office will have a decent vending machine or something.
Image credits: timhamilton47
#31
No one is coming to help. You’d better pay attention and make good decisions.
#32
That once you live on your own, It cost money every second of your life. Even if you stay in and hide in your bed, The bills are rolling like the counter on a gas station pump.
#33
Being an adult is living with regrets.
It’s not only ok to look back and wish you did things different, it’s proof of growth.
#34
The number of possible life paths you have decreases as you get older. Sometimes it actually is too late to start.
#35
You often don’t have time to do things you once enjoyed. You either have too many responsibilities like kids, extra shifts or generally working late, errands, grocery shopping, or coming home and just being too tired.
You have to try your best not to “grind” and burn yourself out. Find a comfortable medium and try to find time for yourself. .
#36
Relationships now require effort to maintain. You need to dedicate energy and time to making plans and meeting friends. It’s worth it!
#37
The good: You can eat as much ice-cream as you want.
The bad: You can eat as much ice-cream as you want.
No, seriously. You think that you get all the freedom in the world when you become an adult, but you are trading ALL your free time just for the means to survive…
Image credits: Strong-Purchase1513
#38
You don’t have to have nap time but you want nap time and you can’t have nap time.
#39
You have to stop eating processed foods.
Image credits: anon
#40
You’re not guaranteed anything. Not love, not happiness. I think most people grow up taking for granted that these things WILL happen. Reality is a lot more complex. If you’re lucky what most of us do get looks something more like a comfortable compromise. And a lot of us end up going through life with less.
#41
Sleeping is a luxury. Sleep well especially at afternoon and also at night when your parents tell you too sleep, just sleep.
Image credits: Beautiful-Tear7059
#42
The opportunities you receive will always be based on your perceived value, not what you feel you are owed or entitled to.
Image credits: Educational-Elk-5893
#43
Those churches are still around for a reason. The real hope and the real joy is there. It doesn’t come in the form of regulations and tax breaks. It comes in the freest form of mind to heal the soul and empower the brain to make society good for all around you.
Some call it religion, God, many other names for God, etc. but what it really is, is a form of self love and preservation.
No government or lover or family or friend can make laws enough to give you that inner peace. That Zen.
You’ve got to find your own spirituality and your own faith, put it to a purpose, and THEN you will be happy.
Simple gifts of random kindness throughout the day is all you need to do.
#44
When you’re young, you identify as a person who hasn’t figured out life yet, but but one day you’ll be a functioning mature adult who has all their s**t together.
That doesn’t ever leave you. You always feel confused in a big world. You still identify as a clueless young person, except you’re body isn’t young anymore. It’s old and failing. And you don’t identify with *these* young people, because they’re strange. The young people you identify with don’t exist anymore, which is lonely and isolating. The old people who had their s**t together when you were young also don’t exist, which is also lonely and isolating. Time speeds up, and each year goes faster than the last. You’re in a freight train accelerating towards a cliff and scary fast speeds, but you’re still waiting for your life to begin, and you’re starting to realize that you might have missed that chance a long time ago.
#45
You’ll really understand that your choices matter for you and your ability to clearly decide will either fill you with a sense of power or dread.
#46
You will spend your life working to buy time… what time?…. Time you aren’t actively working to buy more time….
#47
Society kind of stops giving a s**t about you. When you’re young they see you as a kid with potential, and most people will go out of their way to guide you and encourage you, and then at a certain age it kind of just stops. No one cares to know anymore about what your future goals or aspirations are etc. Especially if you’re a man and average to below average looking you become kind of invisible.
#48
People nowadays have absolutely no feelings at all. They want the “scoop” on their cellphone to post on social media.
