If you have not read the 1997 newspaper advice column or listened to the 1999 spoken word poem, you need to do that first.
Enable Two-Factor Authentication
Ladies and gentlemen of the internet of 2026: Enable two-factor authentication.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, two-factor authentication would be it. The long-term benefits of improving your data security have been proved by countless cybersecurity breaches, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own millennial experience. I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of life in your thirties. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of this decade until it has faded. But trust me, in twenty years, you’ll look back at photo applications on your smartphone and recall in a way you can’t grasp now just how good you really had it.
You do not need GLP-1s.
Don’t panic over the latest doom-scrolling outrage online. Or worry, but know that worrying about something on a 6-inch screen from your bedroom is about as effective as trying to cancel a gym membership by arguing with an AI chatbot. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your doom-scrolling, worried mind. The kind that blindside you when your landlord decides to double your rent on a random Tuesday.
Do one good deed every day, and keep it off the ‘gram. You don’t have to have a degree in theology to understand that loving your neighbor, feeding the hungry, and welcoming the stranger is what being a Christian is actually about.
Stretch… your neck.
Don’t be reckless with other people’s emotional bandwidth. Don’t put up with people who leave you on read when you need them most.
Floss. That one hasn’t changed.
Don’t waste time trying to master every new application or programming language. The tools you use today will be obsolete tomorrow, but the logic you build with them lasts a lifetime.
Screenshot the nice texts you receive. Mute the spam. If you actually manage to ignore the one negative comment out of a hundred positive ones, please teach a masterclass.
Keep your local data backups. Throw away your old micro-USB charging cables. You don’t need 6 of them in your junk drawer.
Get a standing desk.
Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know exactly what you want to do with your career. The most interesting people I know didn’t know what they wanted to do when they walked across the graduation stage a dozen years ago. Some of the most interesting people I know still don’t.
Understand that the internet is forever, but your favorite websites are not.
Be kind to your posture. You’ll miss it when it’s gone.
Maybe you’ll spend your weekends renovating a camper van, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll go viral for a joke, maybe you’ll just quietly enjoy a group chat with three close friends. Whatever you do, stop treating every hobby like a side hustle. Let yourself just enjoy things without feeling the crushing capitalistic pressure to monetize them.
Dance. Even if it’s in your friends’ living room at midnight, and you can’t follow the beat.
Read the terms of service and privacy policy.
Do not follow momfluencers. They will only make you feel like a failure. You are not.
Call your parents. You never know when you won’t be able to anymore.
Be nice to the person you married. They are your best link to your past and the most likely to stick with you in the future.
Understand that internet trends come and go. Today’s viral audio is tomorrow’s cringe corporate marketing campaign.
Live in the suburbs once, but leave before you start using “yoga” and “soul cycle” to describe your personal relationships. Live in the city once, but leave before paying $3,000 a month for a studio starts to feel like a steal.
Travel. And when you do, resist the urge to document every single meal for people back home who are just mindlessly tapping through your stories anyway.
Accept certain inalienable truths: memes will change, APIs will deprecate, and you, too, will get older. And when you do, you’ll fantasize that when you were young, memes made sense, the internet was fun, and people respected their data privacy.
Respect your data privacy.
Don’t hold on to money and material wealth. Give generously to charity and those around you. Make the world better in any way you can.
Don’t stress too much about your hair thinning or going gray, or by the time you’re forty, you’ll have spent a down payment’s worth on serums that smell like peppermint and disappointment.
Be careful which internet gurus you listen to, but be patient with the friends who forward you their podcasts.
Nostalgia is a powerful, deceptive filter. Enjoy looking back, but remember that the past wasn’t actually perfect… it was just different.
But trust me on the two-factor authentication.