Young Adults’ Anxiety Rate Hits One in Five

Nearly one in five young adults in the United States reported feeling anxious every day in 2024, according to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health. That figure was 15% in 2020, which sounds modest until you remember what percentages do when they become people.

The study, led by George Mason University researcher Melissa Villodas, analyzed National Health Interview Survey responses from nearly 11,000 adults ages 18 to 25 collected between 2020 and 2024. It found that the odds of receiving an anxiety diagnosis and the odds of using prescription anxiety medication each rose by roughly a third over the same period.

This is health reporting, not mood-board sociology: the event here is measurable. More young adults said they felt anxious every day. More were diagnosed. More were taking medication. Those are three different indicators, and together they suggest a strain that is not just rhetorical, not just the house style of the internet, and not just a generation being accused of overdescribing its own distress.

The study also found that anxiety did not rise evenly. Women and lesbian, gay and bisexual young adults reported higher rates than their peers. Race and ethnicity patterns were less tidy, shifting depending on whether the researchers were looking at symptoms, diagnoses or medication use, and also depending on sex and sexual orientation. That messiness matters. Public health likes a clean chart; actual life keeps arriving in overlapping identities.

Villodas said the findings point to the need to look at those identities together rather than treating young adults as one flat category. The study’s framing is useful for a reason that goes beyond academic etiquette: a diagnosis rate can reflect need, but it can also reflect access. If one group reports anxiety and another gets the paperwork and the prescription, the gap may say as much about the system as the symptom.

The researchers did not claim to prove what caused the increase after 2020. The study notes that anxiety in this age group had already been rising before the COVID-19 pandemic, while also arguing that any lasting pandemic effects deserve attention. That is a disciplined distinction, and a welcome one. There is already enough cultural temptation to turn every mental-health graph into a single-origin story.

What the paper does offer is a sharper outline of who may need support and who may be missing it. In an era when youth distress is often discussed either as a branding exercise or a political talking point, the less glamorous fact is the important one: a substantial share of young adults say anxiety is part of daily life, and the numbers moved in the wrong direction.