A millennial woman has gone viral on social media after highlighting the daunting event that's on the horizon for all 1995 babies this year.
Joanie Nicole Eliott, 29, shared a video on TikTok (@joanieeliott) pointing out that the start of 2025 can mean only one thing for those born in 1995. She joked that "the time has finally arrived" for millennials, or the often dubbed Zillennials (millennials on the cusp of Generation Z) to wave goodbye to their twenties, and—whisper it quietly—turn 30.
Eliott, who turns 30 on September 18, told Newsweek that the last decade seems to have "gone by in the blink of an eye." One moment she felt like her whole life was ahead of her, now she's nervous about the "pressure and expectation" that comes with being 30 years old.
After sharing this on social media, the TikTok video went viral with over 2 million views and 105,900 likes at the time of writing.
"I think so many people are nervous about it because everyone tends to measure their success by their age," Eliott, from San Antonio, Texas, said. "By 30, we're supposed to have a career, a ring, a marriage, a house, money, kids, or at least one or the other. Everyone wants the American dream and to be truly happy with where they are in life."
She continued: "By the time I turned 30, I wanted to have an amazing career as an actress or a singer, and I wanted to share my experiences to be a beacon for those who struggle. I wanted to be a married mother with a nice home, and a woman who looked at herself in the mirror and was proud of what she saw."
Unfortunately for Eliott, things haven't quite worked out as she'd have hoped.
During her twenties, she dropped out of college, lost custody of her daughter, and battled mental illness. She felt as though she was "frozen in time" for several years, before finding hope in religion.
She is now healing from those experiences and expecting her second daughter in April. She finally feels as though her fortunes are turning around and aims to make her thirties a more positive decade.
"I remember being a teenager imagining the kind of person I'd be when I'm 30. I imagined this successful and happy woman who accomplished all her dreams and made her family proud," Eliott told Newsweek.
"I feel guilty that I let life struggles stop me in my tracks. I fell into a dark pit and buried myself there for years, just going through the motions. I was in the waiting room of life in my twenties," she continued.
She knows she's not the only millennial who has struggled over recent years either. Eliott believes that it's particularly hard for her generation while dealing with social media. However, she tries to remind herself of how fortunate she is to reach 30 and remains optimistic about what lies ahead.
Indeed, when the time comes, she plans to throw a fun celebration with her friends and family that will mark the death of her twenties, and the beginning of a new chapter. She says it will "symbolically put to rest" some of the most challenging years of her life.
She didn't expect her TikTok post to go viral, but she hopes it allows her fellow 1995 babies to feel supported as they embrace this landmark year.
"It meant the world to me to provide a place for the babies of 1995 to connect and share the same experience together. It's easy to compare lives in this world we live in, but we must remember how lucky we are to have made it this far, and always believe we are worthy of more," Eliott said.
Many TikTok users also shared their own feelings about turning 30, leading to more than 4,700 comments on the viral video.
One comment reads: "I think COVID really took away a few years from us. Mentally not 30 at all."
Another person wrote: "It's wild to think about, I pretty much wasted the last 4 years of my 20s but here we are. Still, excited to see how the 30s turn out!"
While another TikTok user joked: "I was born in 94 and I'm still 22, what are you talking about?"
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