A remarkable number has emerged from the American Psychological Association’s latest research: 63% of adults between 18 and 34 have considered leaving the United States. This isn’t about vacation fantasies or study abroad dreams. These are young Americans contemplating permanent departure from the only home many have ever known.
The finding appears in the APA’s 2025 Stress in America report, which surveyed over 3,000 adults about their emotional lives, stress levels, and hopes for the future. What emerged is a portrait of a nation where resilience persists, but at tremendous personal cost.
The report’s subtitle, “A Crisis of Connection,” captures something essential about this moment. Half of American adults report feeling isolated from others, left out, or lacking companionship. But here’s where it gets more troubling: those who cite societal division as a major stressor are significantly more likely to feel alone. Among them, 61% report isolation, compared to 43% of those unbothered by division. Political discord, it seems, isn’t just playing out on social media or cable news. It’s severing the personal bonds that help people weather difficult times.
This disconnection comes with physical consequences. Among those experiencing high levels of loneliness, 94% reported at least one physical symptom of stress in the past month. Headaches, fatigue, anxiety, and depression follow emotional isolation like shadows. The body keeps score, even when we tell ourselves we’re fine.
For young adults contemplating exodus, work offers little anchor. Nearly seven in ten employed adults identify work as a significant source of stress, the highest level since the early pandemic months of 2020. Yet when asked what gives their life meaning, less than half pointed to their jobs. They’re burning out in systems that demand everything while offering diminishing returns of purpose, stability, or even basic satisfaction.
Technology, once promised as liberation, has become another source of anxiety. Student stress about artificial intelligence jumped from 45% to 78% in just one year. Parents with young children report similar spikes in concern. The tools meant to democratize opportunity and expand possibility instead loom as threats to livelihood and identity.
“I need more emotional support than I’m getting,” say 69% of Americans, up from 65% just last year. Among those feeling societal division’s weight, that number rises to 75%. The math is stark: as our need for connection grows, our capacity to provide it for each other shrinks.
These statistics tell a story about more than individual struggles. They reveal structural fractures in how we live together. When young adults consider leaving their country, they’re not just changing addresses. They’re declaring that the fundamental bargain of citizenship feels broken. Work hard, play by the rules, contribute to your community, and you’ll build a decent life. That promise, for many, rings hollow.
Yet the report contains something unexpected: hope. Despite everything, 84% of adults believe they can still create a good life, even if it looks nothing like their parents’ version. Three quarters believe they can help shape the country’s future for the better. This isn’t naive optimism. It’s the kind of stubborn faith that has carried Americans through previous periods of upheaval.
But faith without support structures eventually collapses. The young adults considering departure aren’t quitters or pessimists. They’re canaries in the coal mine, warning that something toxic has entered the air we all breathe. Their contemplated exit should prompt not judgment but urgent questions: What would it take to make them want to stay? What kind of country would kindle hope rather than extinguish it?
The answers won’t come from any single policy or program. Rebuilding social trust, creating meaningful work, taming technological disruption, and healing political wounds requires effort at every level of society. It demands that we see loneliness not as personal failure but as public crisis. It means recognizing that when two thirds of young adults dream of leaving, we’re not facing a youth problem. We’re facing a future problem.
The resilience Americans show in this report is remarkable. But resilience is not infinitely renewable. Without addressing the conditions that strain it, we risk exhausting the very quality we’re counting on for recovery. The question isn’t whether young Americans are tough enough to endure. It’s whether we’re wise enough to stop asking them to prove it.
