Being a young adult stuck at home is rarely laziness; it is usually feeling trapped. What goes on inside, what families can do, and the first steps out.
It is nearly two in the afternoon. Everyone else at home left long ago for work or school, and there is a plate left out for you in the kitchen. You pick up your phone; one video, then another, then a game. In the evening, when your mother's key turns in the door, a familiar tightness begins inside you: you have no answer to the question "What did you do today?" Someone looking from the outside might see you as a lazy young adult stuck at home, the kind people in Turkey call an "ev genci" (literally a "home youth"), someone who is "neither studying nor working". Yet seen from the inside, this state is usually less about laziness than about not knowing where to start, shame and a growing sense of numbness. This article is for young people who are at home as well as for the families losing sleep over them; it looks at how this cycle forms, what feeds it and the first steps that can be taken to get out of it.
Who Is a Young Adult Stuck at Home? What Does "Neither Studying nor Working" Mean?
In everyday Turkish, the term "ev genci" is used for young adults who have finished or left school, are not working and are not continuing any kind of education. These young people may have arrived here by very different routes:
- Those who did not get the result they wanted in the university entrance exam after secondary school, prepared for a year or two, and eventually gave up
- Those who started university and dropped out, or dragged their studies out until their registration was cancelled
- Those who could not find work for a long time after graduating and gradually stopped looking
- Those who started a job, left it within a short time and were never able to start again
- Those who stay at home because of the family's expectation that "A girl shouldn't work; she should stay at home until she marries"
What they all have in common is the feeling that life has come to a standstill at some point. While friends move forward and siblings go to school, the young person feels sidelined, outside of events. This is not a personality trait but a phase; yet the longer it lasts, the more deeply it affects the way the person sees themselves.
The Inner World of a Young Adult Stuck at Home: What Can't Be Seen from Outside
The sentence parents use most often is "He doesn't care about anything." But when we talk to young people who are at home, the picture is usually very different. What looks like indifference is often a curtain drawn over these feelings:
Shame: Old friends' social media posts, relatives' questions, the chance of bumping into someone you know in the street. Shame pulls the person further inside; not going out is the easiest way to avoid questions.
Overwhelm and freezing: The thought "I need to start something" is so big and vague that it is unclear where to begin. Should they find a job, go on a course, prepare for an exam? A mind trapped between options escapes the anxiety by choosing none of them.
Worthlessness: The belief "I can't do anything right" gathers new evidence every day. Another day wasted; and this strengthens the belief.
Disconnection: Staying awake at night and sleeping during the day also allows physical disconnection from the family and the world. Being awake while everyone else is asleep creates a space away from questions.
Hidden anxiety: The thought of the future is so frightening that the mind tries to silence it with games, videos and series. Here the screen is usually not a cause but a means of escape. We have discussed when the relationship with screens becomes a problem in our article on screen addiction.
What keeps a young person stuck at home is usually not laziness, but how big the first step looks.
Why Do Young Adults End Up Stuck at Home? Factors That Feed the Cycle
A young person staying at home is not down to a single cause. Usually several factors feed each other and create a cycle.
Exams and the experience of failure: In Turkey, the YKS (the national university entrance exam) is seen as a threshold that largely determines young people's futures. A young person who fails to get the result they wanted at this threshold once or several times may conclude that "There's something wrong with me" and may not dare to try a new path.
An uncertain job market and the high cost of living: Low-paid jobs not being enough to build an independent life feeds the thought "What's the point of working?" Especially in big cities, rent and transport costs can make starting work seem pointless to a young person.
Psychological difficulties: Experiences such as depression, social anxiety, attention deficit or past bullying can make it harder for a young person to open up to the outside world. Sometimes what is taken for "lack of motivation" is a sign of unrecognised depression. You can find the signs through which depression shows itself in detail in our article on depression symptoms.
Family dynamics: Both an over-protective environment and a constantly critical one can weaken a young person's autonomy. In a home where everything is provided, there is no reason to take on responsibility; in a home where every step is criticised, taking a step is risky.
Loss of daily routine: When an external structure such as school or work disappears, patterns of sleep, eating and movement quickly fall apart. A disordered body means a mind without energy; and a mind without energy struggles to start anything new.
Tension at Home: Communication Caught Between Family and Young Person
In a home with a young adult stuck at home, tension usually repeats the same script. The parent worries and expresses this worry as criticism or advice; the young person feels ashamed and becomes defensive or withdraws to their room; the parent worries more and increases the pressure. With every round, the cycle hardens a little more.
Let's say you have a twenty-two-year-old son. He sat the exam two years in a row and stopped preparing in the third year. His father says every evening at dinner, "At your age I was supporting a household," while his mother gives him pocket money behind her husband's back. Your son has started skipping meals and comes down to the kitchen at night. Everyone in the family means well; but each person's reaction feeds the cycle a little more. The father's anger increases the shame, and the mother's secret support increases the uncertainty.
To break this cycle, it is important for parents to find a common language. In homes where one parent takes on the role of pressure and the other the role of protection, the young person is caught between two opposing messages.
First Steps for Young Adults Stuck at Home
This section speaks directly to young people who are at home and want to get out of this situation.
Put the big plan aside
The goal "I need to get my life in order" is too big to start with. Instead, choose a single small thing you can do this week: getting up before eleven in the morning, leaving the house once during the day, messaging a friend. Completing one small step is far more effective than waiting for motivation. More often than not, motivation comes not before you take action but after.
Find a reason to leave the house
Sitting in the library for a few hours, going out in the morning to buy bread, walking in a nearby park. A small, concrete reason to go out stops the whole day being spent at home. Daylight and movement also help rebuild your sleep pattern.
List what you know
You may see yourself as "someone who knows nothing". Write down the skills you have on a piece of paper: being good with computers, building strategy in a game, being able to explain a lesson to your younger sibling, being able to repair something. This list may give the first clues about the direction you could go in later.
Try things that are narrow in scope and short in duration
Courses at Public Education Centres (Halk Eğitim Merkezleri), vocational training programmes run by İŞKUR (Turkey's public employment agency), municipal youth centres or short-term volunteer work let you reconnect with life outside without requiring a big commitment. Remember that you don't have to finish a course; trying is a step too.
Tell one person
Sharing what you are going through with a sibling, a cousin, a former teacher or a friend you trust reduces the power of shame. Shame grows the more it is hidden; it shrinks once it is put into words.
For Families: How Can You Approach Your Young Person at Home?
Seeing your child at home, seemingly cut off from their future, creates deep anxiety and sometimes anger. These feelings are very understandable; but how you express them can be decisive in whether or not the young person takes action.
- Turn criticism into curiosity. Asking "What's been weighing on you most lately?" instead of "You've been lying around all day" opens the door to conversation.
- Agree on a shared stance as parents. When one of you is strict and the other soft, the young person gets lost between two voices. Reach an agreement between yourselves first.
- Give them a concrete role at home. Taking on the shopping, dropping a younger sibling off at school, being responsible for a household task; these give the young person both routine and a sense of being useful.
- Tie support to a direction. Cutting financial support suddenly usually creates resistance; continuing it unconditionally and without limits prolongs the uncertainty. For example, linking part of their pocket money to a course or a job-search plan can be agreed by talking it through together.
- Avoid comparison and labelling. Words like "lazy" or "freeloader" confirm the young person's worst beliefs about themselves.
- Don't overlook psychological difficulties. Prolonged lack of motivation, tearfulness, major changes in sleep and complete withdrawal may call for a professional assessment.
Our article on adult children who don't leave home, which looks at adult children being unable to leave home and dependent relationships within the family, may also offer a different perspective on this subject.
When Should You Seek Professional Support?
Staying at home is not always a sign of a psychological condition. However, the following situations should be taken into account:
- Lack of motivation and loss of enjoyment continuing almost every day for more than two weeks
- Night and day being completely reversed, and this not being correctable
- Even thinking about leaving the house causing intense anxiety
- Hardly communicating with the family at all, not leaving the room for long periods
- Passing the time with alcohol, substances or betting
- Thoughts of worthlessness, hopelessness or "Everyone would be better off without me"
If you notice that the young person has thoughts of harming themselves or ending their life, don't put it off; in an emergency call 112 (emergency services) and contact a professional as soon as possible.
For young people who find it hard to leave the house, one option that can make the first step easier is online therapy. Connecting to a session from their own room is less daunting for some young people than going to a face-to-face appointment, and as the process progresses it is possible to move to face-to-face sessions.
How Is a Young Adult Stuck at Home Supported in Therapy?
In therapy, the first goal is usually not "finding a job" but the young person becoming involved in their own life again. In cognitive behavioural therapy, through a method called behavioural activation, small activities the young person values are placed into a weekly plan. The aim is not to wait for motivation, but to rebuild energy and confidence through small actions.
Thoughts of shame and worthlessness also have an important place in therapy. Thoughts such as "Everyone sees me as a failure" or "It's too late now" are examined together with concrete evidence. If there are accompanying difficulties such as social anxiety or depression, these are also addressed separately.
Where necessary, family sessions can also be included in the process. Working with parents on communication style, boundaries and expectations contributes to changing the cycle at home. In some cases, older patterns that make it harder for the young person to become independent, such as schemas of feeling inadequate or being dependent on others, can be addressed from a schema-focused perspective.
Frequently Asked Questions
My young person sleeps all day. Is it laziness or depression?
This is not easy to tell from the outside. If long hours of sleep continue for weeks together with loss of enjoyment, hopelessness, changes in appetite and social withdrawal, the possibility of depression should be assessed. A diagnosis can only be made through a professional assessment; so rather than labelling, it is more helpful to talk to your young person and, if necessary, consult a professional.
Should I keep giving pocket money to my child who stays at home?
Cutting it off completely and continuing it unconditionally often both fail to give the hoped-for result. Linking part of the pocket money to small, realistic goals you set together may be a more balanced path. What matters is that this is discussed as a support plan, not as a punishment.
Our daughter has finished secondary school and we say she should stay at home until she marries. Is there any harm in that?
This decision usually comes from a wish to protect; but when it is made without taking the young person's own wishes and dreams into account, it can feed withdrawal, worthlessness and hopelessness about the future. It is important to talk openly with your daughter about what she wants, and to consider together the possibility of a course, a job or continuing her education. Having her own income and skills supports a young person's psychological resilience, whichever path she chooses.
I'm stuck at home and I don't know where to start. What should I do?
Start not with a big plan, but with a single small step you can complete this week: getting up at a set time or leaving the house once a day, for example. Once that step holds, add the next one. If you are struggling on your own, talking to someone you trust or to a professional can make the first step much easier.
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Eda Erkan Alapala
Klinik Psikolog. İstanbul Kent Üniversitesi Klinik Psikoloji Tezli Yüksek Lisans mezunu; bilişsel davranışçı terapi, çocuk merkezli oyun terapisi ve çocuk-ergen psikoterapisi alanlarında eğitimlerini tamamlamıştır.
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