Emerging adulthood.

Red = Research.
Black = My thoughts/How it effects project.

I stumbled over the concept of emerging adulthood and it is exactly what our brief is talking about and trying to help those transition through.

Emerging adulthood is the stage after highschool in which an increasing amount of 20yr olds are feeling at a state of loss and confusion due to the changing 21st century and modern world.


A study found that over 60% of those aged 19-29 believed that  "adulthood will be more enjoyable than my life is now."

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http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/wellness/story/2012-07-30/Emerging-adults-18-29-still-attached-to-parents/56575404/1

This statistic from a wellness journal is exactly what our brief is based around and what we are trying to do. This perception that life will be better when one is an adult is a horrible way to live yet with the changing world the period between finishing school and becoming an adult ( ones 20s ) is growing into a whole new space and period of a humans life that in previous generations was not there.

As I look around at all the younger people in our small hometown, I see it everywhere. This isn't the same generation my wife and I grew up in. We were expected to either go to college and get right on into a job, get married and start raising a family, go to work right after high school or go into the military. (We're in our late 50's).

This is what an older man said in response to emerging adulthood.

It is interesting how he managed to establish that it is a different world and a different generation to his, yet those whom are navigating this emerging adulthood just feel as if they are lost and unsuccessful due to them not being at the same stage in life in their 20s as their parents were.

Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, Ph.D is the leading scholar behind Emerging Adulthood, which in a nutshell suggests that the majority of twentysomethings in Westernized cultures go through a specific sort of ambiguous waiting period between the transition from adolescence to adult. The typical “adult” markers of leaving home, getting married, and having children, are no longer the indicators that you have boarded the Adult Train.