Could you be 20 today?

[Chernosoth]

Adaptation to anything is easier with youth. If I had been born in 2003, I would have different experiences, expectations, skills, injuries, etc.

 

[caitiff1969]

I don't think I'd want to. I wouldn't have the same amazing friends I do today, I'd be a different person.

 

[jackburns]

Could I be 20 today? Would require some mind-boggling violations of the laws of physics.

 

[jaF0]

No chance.

 

[PMarky2]

Nope, but I would not mind being 27 and single so I could chase a certain young woman I know.

 

[EctoJohn]

I'm not good at being in my 40s, so maybe I might do better resetting back to my 20s.

 

[Coyote100]

It has been so long ago that l have forgotten what it was like to be twenty.

 

[37_ttej]

Hell, no. I was a complete jerk.
A snotty little smart-arse nerd with a weird sense of humour that dropped little sarcasm bombs all over the place.

Wait.

I’ll see myself out.

 

[EctoJohn]

Seems a couple of you are forgetting that you wouldn't be the actual you from when you were 20, you'd be a version of you that is a modern age 20.
There would be different perspectives and different circumstances.
I can't imagine 2002 EctoJohn is the same as a 2024 EctoJohn, even if we're both 20.

 

[Mo_Bandy]

Might be difficult slaying all that ass but muh fucker could still pull it off you know.

 

[jaF0]

Maybe the question should have been asked differently somehow. Not quite sure how to get it across. It isn't so much about being 20. It's about growing up today versus growing up wherever you were 20. The world is a completely different place now than it was in the 60s, 70s or 80s. Not just about differences in technology either. The pressures on kids now is something I wouldn't want to deal with. The types of jobs available, what they need to learn in school, what it takes to buy a house and so on.

 

[EdgySubMic]

Could I be 20 now? Well, I managed to survive in a quite "hostile" world before, so I guess I'd also manage in today's. There's a very tough cookie inside of me.

Would I want to be 20 now (apart from again having a life in front of me)? I can see some advantages (e.g., there are so many memories of which I would like to have (more) pictures, which wasn't an option when I was 20 and younger), but all in all I don't think so. Far too many freedoms for kids growing up and doing "stupid" fun stuff in order to learn have been forgotten since back then.

Professionally, as a computer guy, I have long considered that I was extremely lucky to be born in 65, seeing computers magically "grow up" alongside me in the way they did, getting early internet access in 1988 before the thing got all rotten, etc. But looking back at what all that potential sadly has evolved into, I now consider I'd rather prefer having been born 10 or 20 years earlier. Computer science was fascinating in those days as well (maybe even more), and I'd have to live through less of the nonsense that it gave birth to.

Whatever year I'm beamed into, my one condition would be for my best friend to be beamed accordingly. We met when I was 26 and he was on the verge of turning 23. I'd gladly shave a few years off of that in a "rerun".

 

[EctoJohn]

The pressures on kids now is something I wouldn't want to deal with.

I don't really think the pressure on 20-somethings now is any greater than it was when we were 20.
Heck, I only turned 20 in 2002, so it's pretty similar.
Still, the pressures might be different today, but not any worse.
Sure, the older of us didn't have internet bullying, but we also lacked the regular internet access in general.
We had dial up, no wi-fi, and those even older than I am didn't have it at all.
There's a certain freedom and open worldness to the modern always on internet that we lacked.
You couldn't escape reality with a pocket-sized rectangle.
The further back you go in time, the less connected you were to anywhere outside the range of your gas tank.
There wasn't the freedom to talk to essentially strangers about shared life experiences like we're doing right now.
Even as recently as the 90s, if you were gay or bi or, god forbid, trans, you didn't really have anywhere to go with it.
Hell, if you were gay in the 1980s, people might still blame you for AIDS.
Sure, 20-somethings now live in a post-9/11 world, but they aren't living in a Cold War world.

It's a bit of a case of the grass is always greener.