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March is Women's History Month!

Is 30 Really The New 20?

Whatever it is you want to change about yourself, now is the time to change it.

Part 3 of the TED Radio Hour episode The Next Greatest Generation?

About Meg Jay's TEDTalk

Psychologist Meg Jay has a message for twenty-somethings: just because marriage, work and kids happen later, doesn't mean you can't start planning now. She tells twenty-somethings how they can reclaim adulthood in the defining decade of their lives.

About Meg Jay

Meg Jay is a clinical psychologists who specializes in adult development, particularly those in their 20s. In her practice and in her book The Defining Decade, Jay suggests that many twenty-somethings have been caught in a swirl of hype and misinformation.

Jay says the rhetoric that "30 is the new 20" trivializes what is actually the most transformative period of our adult lives. She draws from science and stories from 10 years of clinical work to show that far from being an irrelevant downtime, our twenties are a developmental sweet spot that comes only once.

She is an assistant clinical professor at the University of Virginia and maintains a private practice in Charlottesville, Va.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

NPR/TED Staff