Something has shifted for young people in India over the last several years, and it goes beyond the usual pressures of growing up. The anxiety that a lot of young Indians are carrying today feels different in both scale and intensity from what previous generations described, and understanding why requires looking at the world they’re actually navigating. In an interview with HT Lifestyle, Dr Chandni Tugnait, MD (AM), psychotherapist, life alchemist, coach, and healer, founder and director of Gateway of Healing.
The pressure to have everything figured out
According to Dr Chandni, young people today are expected to have everything figured out much earlier than previous generations did, and that includes academic choices, career paths, financial stability, and some kind of visible sense of direction, often at an age when they’re still working out who they even are. Social media makes this harder because everyone else’s wins are right there on your screen, making what used to be a fairly private process of figuring life out feel like something you’re somehow losing at.
