For Olivia Pfeiffer, graduating from college felt like jumping off a cliff. She’d leave behind the familiar rhythms of structured classes, campus life and a built-in community that infused her life with consistency and stability. “I had so many fears — loneliness, drifting, not finding something that I was passionate about,” Pfeiffer, a 24-year-old who lives in Philadelphia, told me. “The idea of going from college to a traditional nine-to-five was a daunting topic.”
In her senior year, Pfeiffer signed up for “Shaping an Adult Life,” a course that is different from the typical academic offerings at Villanova University. It is part of a broader “Shaping Initiative” within the honors program that helps college students wrestle with deeper questions —about purpose, professional fulfillment and building relationships — rather than just preparing for a career.
“You spend so much time in college figuring out what you’re going to do for a job as the most important thing,” said Pfeiffer, who had taken two previous Shaping courses on navigating college and work life. While she felt confident academically, questions like “how do I spend free time?” and “how do I build meaningful friendships and romantic relationships?” felt far murkier. “These are not the questions that are given the care and attention.”
Indeed, fewer young adults, and young men in particular, are dating and are in romantic relationships — 44% of Gen Z men today report having no relationship experience during their teenage years. And despite being in the thick of what’s often portrayed as the most carefree years of life, young adults between 18 and 24 are twice as likely as older adults to experience mental health struggles yet less likely to seek help, according to developmental clinical psychologist Meg Jay, who studies young adults in their 20s. What’s supposed to be a time of adventure and self-discovery, she argues, has instead become a “mental health low point.”
This is a problem that the Villanova program seeks to address.
When Anna Moreland, professor of humanities and theologian at the Pennsylvania university, began teaching in the Shaping Initiative course six years ago, she found it was like putting “my finger on a raw nerve in the students’ lives.” Her students were bright, ambitious and in many ways, over-prepared — except when it came to figuring out who they were and what they wanted beyond their résumés. Research backs up this sense of unease: A 2024 study from Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation found that while most among the Gen Z generation are optimistic about their future, only 51% feel prepared for it.
Moreland sees a generation chasing professional success but struggling to find fulfillment in their work, build meaningful relationships and carve out time for leisure. And the young people know they’re struggling. More than anything, she says, they are eager for guidance. “They are lost in the wilderness without a map,” Moreland told me. “And their friends are as lost as they are.”
Why are young adults struggling?
We’ve long known that young people are struggling, but recent studies bring into focus just how significant the problem is. A 2024 study from Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation highlights a troubling decline in student engagement — a key predictor of future confidence. Engagement has dropped since 2023, and the impact extends into adulthood: Highly engaged students are four times more likely to strongly believe in their future success and 10 times more likely to feel prepared for adulthood. Teachers play a crucial role, with 60% of students citing engaging instruction as a defining factor in their sense of readiness.
Young adults are struggling more than teens. A 2023 study from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education found that anxiety now affects 36% of young adults — double the rate seen in teenagers. Similarly, depression is reported by 29% of young adults compared to just 15% of teens. Many young people feel anxious and lonely, often citing financial insecurity and a lack of meaning in their education and careers. Half of young adults surveyed said their mental health was negatively impacted by “not knowing what to do with my life.”
Loneliness is also a defining feature of young adulthood — 34% feel isolated, 44% feel like they don’t matter and nearly half (45%) say they believe “things are falling apart.” External pressures weigh heavily on them, too, with significant portions reporting that their mental health is impacted by gun violence (42%), climate change (34%) and political instability (30%).
Relationships, too, are shifting in ways that deepen this sense of disconnection. Fewer young Americans are dating than previous generations — only 56% of Gen Z adults say they were in a romantic relationship during their teenage years. Compare that to 78% of Baby Boomers and 76% of Gen Xers, for whom dating was a far more common part of adolescence.
This cultural shift isn’t just about changing social norms, but it’s reshaping how young people experience intimacy and navigate adulthood. As psychologist Meg Jay put it in her 2024 book “The Twentysomething Treatment”: “Although we may think of our twenties as an incredible social time, they are in fact the loneliest years of all.”
‘Petrified of each other’
After finishing college, Pfeiffer, who studied economics and sustainability at Villanova, received a job offer from a prestigious New York consulting firm. On paper, it was a perfect next step, but the job did not align with Pfeiffer’s passion for sustainability. Instead of settling, Pfeiffer made the difficult choice to hold out for something that felt right.
But too many students arrive at college with their career paths already set in stone, leaving little room for exploration, Moreland told me. “They were good at math in the 10th grade, and all of a sudden, they’re 20 and they’re almost an engineer,” said Moreland, professor and co-author of “The Young Adult Playbook: Living Like It Matters.” And while that might work for some people, for others that’s just too early to commit to a lifelong career.
Many young adults are racing to check off the next milestone but in the process, they’re buckling under immense pressure. Family expectations and financial anxieties, amplified by the staggering costs of tuition and ensuing debt, make adulthood feel like a high-stakes and intimidating game.
Even the idea of leisure and rest feels wasteful in a culture that upholds productivity and efficiency as foundational values. Pfeiffer admits to internalizing the binary of work as good and leisure as bad, saying, “There was this constant pressure to always be progressing.”
A study of more than 100 undergraduates at Ohio University found that those who viewed leisure as “productive” didn’t actually enjoy their free time any more than those who didn’t see it that way.
Leisure, Moreland argues, isn’t just about putting down your phone. It’s about reclaiming a sense of joy and identity.
“It’s about rediscovering the things you loved as a kid and linking what you do to who you are,” Moreland told me. Many young adults, she’s found, struggle with simply being alone with their thoughts. In her class, she introduces ideas like cultivating an “interior garden,” incorporating Sabbath practices and doing things purely for enjoyment’s sake — not because they look good on a résumé.
In their personal life too, young adults are navigating another wilderness: a digital one. More than half of adults under 30 (53%) have used a dating app, according to Pew Research Center, with Tinder reigning as the most popular app. Yet, while many young adults are resilient in the face of job applications and rejections, asking someone out for a coffee date has become a far more daring feat, Moreland told me. “While they’re less and less equipped to actually date in a healthy way, they’re more and more desperate for it,” she said.
The lack of clear social norms and shared vocabulary around dating has only added to the confusion — “talking,” for instance, can mean anything from casual texting to hooking up. Fear — of rejection, of misinterpretation, even of each other — seems to loom over their interactions. “They’re petrified of each other,” Moreland said.
Starting early
Developing emotional resilience and fostering deep connection should start much earlier than college. Adults who are closest to children should model what adulthood looks like, according to Ken Ginsburg, a pediatrician and expert in adolescent development at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who also co-directs the Center for Parent and Teen Communication. Ginsburg is also the author of the new book “Lighthouse Parenting: Raising Your Child With Loving Guidance for a Lifelong Bond” as well as the 2022 book “Congrats — You’re Having a Teen!”
Too often, parents focus on their child’s happiness and performance, neither of which are long-term goals. Instead, Ginsburg urges parents to think about the kind of 35-year-old they hope their child will become: Someone equipped with emotional resilience and coping skills, creativity, and the ability to collaborate. “We’re not putting pressure today on what you’re doing,” Ginsburg told me. “We’re thinking more about who you’re becoming — knowing you matter, knowing you belong.”
This approach also allows “uneven” kids — those who develop at different paces — to thrive. By contrast, high-stakes and pressure-filled parenting can backfire, leading to resentment and emotional distance between parent and child instead of closeness: " Parenting for an adult also involves thinking how do I parent in such a way that our relationship will endure for decades, the way it’s supposed to?”
Making mistakes, listening and allowing children freedom within the security of unconditional love is part of modeling how to be human. A balanced adult works, but also rests and takes care of themselves. Ginsburg sees his role as helping adults be emotionally available when their kids need them most — which can help them be secure and confident adults.
“Kids only come to you when you have bandwidth,” he told me. Expanding that bandwidth through self-care allows children to feel safe turning to adults when they’re struggling: “Children come to you because they understand they can do so without hurting you.”
A way forward
When it comes to work, Moreland’s first goal is to “rehabilitate” students’ imagination about what makes a successful professional life. One assignment in her course asks students to identify an adult they admire and interview them about their job. She encourages students to think beyond simplistic pro-con lists and toward a deeper sense of discernment. “It gets them to honor the fact that if I make this choice, I’m walking away from another set of goods,” she said. The process helps them to “honor the tragedy” of moving on to new opportunities that they actively chose.
Moreland encourages students to resist the urge to take the first job offer that comes their way, nudging them instead to practice “deeper professional discernment” — to choose a path that aligns with their values, not just their résumés.
Pfeiffer took this advice to heart when she turned down the consulting gig. Now working as an environmental, social and governance specialist at a manufacturing company, she feels more aligned with her purpose. “I had the courage to say no to my first offer despite it being a traditionally safe choice,” she said, crediting Villanova’s “Shaping” course with helping her take that leap of faith.
To push students outside their comfort zones, Moreland assigns a challenge: Ask someone out on a date — not through an app or a text, but by extending an in-person invitation. The exercise was inspired by Boston College philosophy professor Kerry Cronin, who came up with the idea after realizing that many of her students were graduating without ever having been on a single date.
The goal isn’t just to secure a date, but to practice vulnerability, to step outside the safety of curated digital interactions and confront the possibility of rejection. The class also explores ghosting and the importance of treating others with respect. Moreland even coaches students on how to have a “what are we?” conversation, as well as practical ways to socialize offline, like hosting a progressive dinner party.
“No one has the courage to look at each other and say, ‘What are we doing?’” Moreland said. The digital world encourages oversharing, yet that openness doesn’t always translate into real life.
A refrain she often shares with students is to “take their fears out of the driver’s seat and put them in the trunk,” encouraging them to prioritize their hopes and dreams instead. Parents, she says, should listen closely to young people, not to mold them to align with external expectations but to help them uncover their true aspirations. “They’re seeking the good, the true and the beautiful,” Moreland told me. “They have spiritual depth, but they don’t have the vocabulary to bring it out of the shadows and into the light.”