In 2014, researchers showed people a social media profile of someone who seemed to be doing better than them. Those people rated themselves lower on the spot than people who saw a profile of someone doing worse (Vogel and others, 2014). Looking at one profile was enough to lower how they rated themselves in that moment.
Most of us carry a scoreboard like that in our heads. I call it the comparison scoreboard. It tracks house, partner, career and money, and it says everyone your age is winning. This article has four findings about that scoreboard, and each one is stranger than the last. By the end, "I wasted my 20s" should sound like a different sentence.
The scoreboard is rigged, and not in your favour
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 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. It is like judging a restaurant by its menu photos while living in your own kitchen at 11pm.
The same team ran a survey that makes it worse. People who used a social media site most often reported lower self-esteem, and the link ran through how much they compared themselves to people doing better. That survey only shows a link, so it cannot prove the site caused the drop. It fits the experiment, though.
So the next time you feel behind, ask whose highlights you are holding up against your whole life.
The sting of regret shows where change is still possible
You would expect regret to be a pure punishment. The research says it is closer to a compass.
In 2005, Roese and Summerville combined 11 studies that ranked what people regret most. The six biggest areas were education, career, romance, parenting, the self and leisure. Their explanation is the surprising part. People regret most in the areas where they see the largest opportunities, meaning real chances for change, growth and renewal.
Think of a sore tooth. It hurts because something there can still be fixed, and a tooth that is long gone does not hurt at all. The same logic applies to the part of your life that stings most. Part of you still believes it can move.
Now read "I wasted my 20s" again. It sounds like a verdict, but it often works like an alibi. If the decade is gone and nothing can be done, you are excused from starting. The sting says the opposite, which is that you are not excused.
What you never tried outlasts what you tried badly
If regret points at change, the next question is which kind of regret to fear. Most people guess the embarrassing mistakes.
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. A clumsy first attempt at a new job or a new craft stings for a while and then fades. The class you never signed up for keeps coming back.
That turns waiting into the expensive choice. When you tell yourself you will start once you feel ready, you are picking the regret that lasts longest.
Your twenties were never a deadline
The last finding goes after the clock itself. The idea that you must be sorted by 30 feels like a law of nature.
In 2000, Arnett proposed a stage he called "emerging adulthood," running from the late teens through the twenties, 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. A timetable that changes when you cross a border is a custom, not a clock.
There is one more correction, and it works in your favour. Many people believe personality sets like concrete by 30. Roberts, Walton and Viechtbauer (2006) pooled 92 samples and found that people tend to grow in conscientiousness, emotional stability and social dominance, especially from age 20 to 40. Of six trait groups, four also showed significant change in middle and old age.
The 30-year-old you are afraid of becoming is not a finished draft. It is another stage in a long edit.
What to try
None of this needs a new personality. It needs four small, plain steps.
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Follow the regret. Take the area that hurts most, such as work, love or friends. Pick the smallest version of a move there, like one application sent, one message to an old friend, or one evening class booked. Tonight, open your calendar and book one hour this week for it, with a name next to it. Don't plan the decade. Just spend the hour.
4. Judge by direction. Alfred Adler, an early psychologist, 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." So ask whether you are further along than a year ago, in any one thing. 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."
How far to trust all this
None of these studies measured "wasted 20s" directly. I am joining the dots from the abstracts, and the dots point the same way. The Vogel survey shows a link, not a cause, and the personality finding is an average, so it does not promise you will transform.
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, the sting you have been reading as a sign that you lost is a sign that you can still move. You are not late to someone else's race. You are a person with a working compass, and an hour on your calendar is all it takes to start following it.
In short
- Feeling behind comes from comparing your whole life with other people's best moments, and one glance at someone ahead can lower how you rate yourself.
- Regret is strongest where you see real chances for change, so it works like 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.
- Book one hour this week for the area where the regret is loudest.
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