Best Book of 2021 -Esquire? Featured on Good Morning America A meticulous cartography of how
outer forces shape young people's inner lives. -Esquire Best Books of 2021 In conversation
with young adults and experts alike journalist Rainesford Stauffer explores how the incessant
pursuit of a best life has put extraordinary pressure on young adults today across our
personal and professional lives-and how ordinary meaningful experiences may instead be the
foundation of a fulfilled and contented life. Young adulthood: the time of our lives when
theoretically anything can happen and the pressure is on to make sure everything does. Social
media has long been the scapegoat for a generation of unhappy young people but perhaps the
forces working beneath us-wage stagnation student debt perfectionism and inflated costs of
living-have a larger more detrimental impact on the world we post to our feeds. An Ordinary
Age puts young adults at the center as Rainesford Stauffer examines our obsessive need to live
and post our #bestlife and the culture that has defined that life on narrow and often
unattainable terms. From the now required slate of (often unpaid) internships to the
loneliness epidemic to the stress of finding yourself through school work and hobbies-the
world is demanding more of young people these days than ever before. And worse it's leaving
little room for our generation to ask the big questions about who they want to be and what
makes a life feel meaningful. Perhaps we're losing sight of the things that fulfill us: strong
relationships real roots in a community and the ability to question how we want our lives to
look and feel even when that's different from what we see on the 'Gram. Stauffer makes the
case that many of our most formative young adult moments are the ordinary ones: finding our
people and sticking with them learning to care for ourselves on our own terms and figuring
out who we are when the other stuff-the GPAs job titles the filters-fall away.
