The Lost Reps: How COVID Shaped Young Adult Development

Dr. Julie Sorenson

Welcome to the show. Kai, I want to start with one age range: 18 to 25. If you were in that window in 2020, COVID didn’t just cancel plans. It hit right in the middle of identity formation, first real independence, serious relationships, emotional growth -- all the developmental stuff that usually happens by actually LIVING life.

Kai Mercer

And 18 to 25 is such a brutal window to freeze. I mean, that’s not just “college got weird.” That’s first apartment, first breakup without your high school support system, first boss, first time figuring out who you are when nobody’s curating it for you. You lose that in-person trial-and-error, and yeah... you don’t just bounce back because the world reopened.

Dr. Julie Sorenson

Exactly. Emotional development doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It happens through repetition and exposure. You get disappointed, you recover. You have conflict, you repair. You try something, it fails, you regulate, you try again. During lockdown, so many young adults got chronic uncertainty instead -- isolation, loss of control, grief, disrupted routines. And research in 2024, including Sayed’s review, keeps showing elevated anxiety, depression, sleep disruption, and emotional dysregulation in this group.

Kai Mercer

Let me push on “emotional dysregulation,” because people hear that and think clinical jargon. Are we basically saying, “Hey, a lot of people never got the reps?” Like missing emotional gym day for... I don’t know... a year plus?

Dr. Julie Sorenson

Honestly, that’s a pretty good translation. Cerutti and colleagues in 2024 tied post-lockdown struggles to declines in social-emotional skills and difficulty managing distress. So yes -- many young adults did not get the normal reps for handling real-world stress. Not because they were weak. Because the environment was overwhelming and unnatural.

Kai Mercer

“The reps” is the part that sticks for me. I remember talking to younger clients during that time -- or, well, technically they were adults, but barely -- and everything felt flattened. No hallway conversations, no awkward coffee dates, no bombing a presentation and then realizing you survived it. Those tiny moments are annoying when you’re in them, but they’re how confidence gets built.

Dr. Julie Sorenson

Yes! Confidence is often just survived experience. And what I think gets missed is that some young adults adapted beautifully. We should say that clearly. Some found new coping strategies, built online community, became more reflective, more intentional. Research like Bieniak and colleagues in 2024 points to that resilience. But adaptation was not universal, and recovery has not been linear.

Kai Mercer

That “not linear” part matters. Because I can already hear the cultural commentary -- “It’s been years, why are they still struggling?” And I’m like... because six years later, your nervous system doesn’t care what the calendar says. If your stress wiring got shaped during chronic uncertainty, that imprint can hang around.

Dr. Julie Sorenson

Right. We don’t ask, “Why didn’t you heal on schedule?” We ask, “What happened while you were trying to grow?” A lot of young adults are learning emotional regulation later than expected. They’re learning it in their mid-twenties, sometimes late twenties, in jobs and relationships that assume they already know how.

Kai Mercer

Nothing like learning emotional regulation while answering Slack messages and pretending you totally understand your health insurance.

Dr. Julie Sorenson

Exactly. It’s a very unforgiving classroom. But that’s why compassion matters here. If a young adult seems overwhelmed by things that look “basic,” it may not be immaturity. It may be delayed practice.

Kai Mercer

And for anybody listening who’s in that age group -- if you feel behind, that doesn’t automatically mean you are behind. It may mean your developmental timeline got interrupted at 22, and now at 28 you’re rebuilding skills you should’ve had the chance to practice in real life, not on a screen.

Kai Mercer

Okay, so let’s go to the thing people misread all the time. Somebody says, “This generation is lazy,” or “They’re so socially awkward,” and I wanna be like -- hold on. What if what looks like avoidance is actually a missed developmental window?

Dr. Julie Sorenson

Yes. Social skills depend on repetition. Conversation, conflict, connection, rejection, repair. You do not build those well in total isolation. Rodriguez Monge and colleagues in 2023 found reduced in-person interaction during the pandemic negatively affected social and communication skill development, especially in young adults and college students.

Kai Mercer

“Conversation, conflict, repair” -- that sequence is EVERYTHING. Because people think social confidence means charisma. It doesn’t. A lot of it is just learning, “Oh, that was awkward... and I didn’t die. Oh, they misunderstood me... and we fixed it.” If you lose hundreds of those little moments, face-to-face interaction can start feeling way higher stakes than it actually is.

Dr. Julie Sorenson

That’s beautifully put. And there’s more. Magis-Weinberg and colleagues in 2024 found increased loneliness and decreased social connectedness across ages 10 to 25 during the pandemic years. Clinically, educators and therapists are still noticing the aftereffects: more social anxiety, less confidence in relationships, and more difficulty with in-person communication.

Kai Mercer

And this is where I get a little spicy. Because we’ll watch a 24-year-old hesitate in a meeting and call them unmotivated. We’ll see someone default to texting instead of calling and call them detached. But if they missed two years of practice during a key stretch, maybe we should stop grading them like they had a normal runway.

Dr. Julie Sorenson

I’m with you. The same goes for life transitions. Cook and colleagues in 2025 reported that more than 80 percent of young adults experienced major disruption in education, employment, independence, or relationships. More than 80 percent. That is not an individual failure story. That is a generational disruption story.

Kai Mercer

More than 80 percent -- yeah, that number lands. That’s not “a few people had a hard time.” That’s basically the whole room. So when someone’s career path looks delayed, or they moved back home longer than expected, or they seem unsure of who they are... maybe that uncertainty makes perfect sense.

Dr. Julie Sorenson

It does. And I think for parents, professors, supervisors, even friends, the practical question becomes: how do we support rebuilding? We make space for emotional regulation skills instead of assuming they exist. We create low-pressure opportunities for real-world interaction. We normalize that delayed transitions are still transitions. And we give language to the experience: “What happened to you during that time?” not “What is wrong with you?”

Kai Mercer

I love the low-pressure part. Don’t throw somebody into a giant networking event and call it growth. Maybe it’s one coffee. One in-person class discussion. One hard conversation they don’t avoid. Tiny reps again. We’re back to reps.

Dr. Julie Sorenson

We are. Because this is not a broken generation. It is a generation shaped by disruption, adapting with uneven support, and rebuilding in public. And rebuilding rarely looks polished.

Kai Mercer

So maybe the better question isn’t, “Why aren’t young adults over it yet?” Maybe it’s... what kind of world are we creating for people who are still learning how to come back to one another? Thank you for joining us for this conversation on Unpack with Dr. Julie. Until next time, take care of yourself and each other.