The Science of Mindfulness
Empowering College-Aged Adults with Mindfulness
Learn the unique challenges college-aged adults face and the transformative power of mindfulness in fostering well-being, resilience, and personal growth.


Understanding the Stresses of College-Aged Adults
From ages 18 to 30, emerging adults encounter a pivotal time in their lives characterized by exploration, instability, and increased online engagement.
Research* indicates that this population is more likely to experience a range of challenges, including:
- Decreased socialization with friends
- Heightened feelings of loneliness
- Increased risk of depressive episodes
- Excessive time spent online
The Benefits of Mindfulness: Compassion, Resilience, and Wisdom
Research* has revealed that wandering minds are often unhappy minds, and individuals experience greater happiness when they anchor their attention in the present moment.
Mindfulness practices have been extensively studied, including our own research, demonstrating their efficacy in:
- Cultivating a calm and focused mind
- Alleviating stress and anxiety
- Enhancing compassion and empathy
- Reducing aggression and conflict
- Boosting memory and cognitive abilities
- Fostering self-confidence
- Improving symptoms of ADHD
- Mitigating the impact of stereotypes
- Reducing implicit biases related to race and age


Addressing the Unique Needs of College-Aged Adults
While college-aged adults yearn for these transformative skills, they often lack accessible guidance tailored to their specific needs.
At the Mindfulness Institute for Emerging Adults, our evidence-based curriculum is specifically designed to bridge this gap. Our comprehensive certification and teacher-support program equips aspiring mindfulness teachers with the necessary tools to make a positive difference in the lives of others.
*Research and resources
Research about Emerging Adults
- Emerging Adulthood by Jeffrey Arnett
- Pew Research Center: Teens, Social Media and Technology 2018
- US Dept of Health: National Survey on Drug Use and Health
- Physical Aggression and Mindfulness among College Students: Evidence from China and the United States
- Ensuring College Student Success Through Mindfulness-Based Classes: Just Breathe
- Meditation in the Higher-Education Classroom: Meditation Training Improves Student Knowledge Retention during Lectures
- Promoting healthy transition to college through mindfulness training with first-year college students: Pilot randomized controlled trial
- Mindfulness and Retention: A Potential Solution to the Lack of Persistence of Community College Students
- The Deloitte Global Gen Z and Millennial Survey
- Associations Between Time Spent Using Social Media and Internalizing and Externalizing Problems Among US Youth
Research about Mindfulness
- Mindfulness Training Improves Working Memory Capacity and GRE Performance While Reducing Mind Wandering
- Physical Aggression and Mindfulness among College Students: Evidence from China and the United States
- NIH: A wandering mind is an unhappy mind
- A failure in mind: Dispositional mindfulness and positive reappraisal as predictors of academic self-efficacy following failure
- Project MUSE – Ensuring College Student Success Through Mindfulness-Based Classes: Just Breathe
- A meta-analytic investigation of the impact of mindfulness-based interventions on ADHD symptoms
- Mindful maths: Reducing the impact of stereotype threat through a mindfulness exercise
- Meditation in the Higher-Education Classroom: Meditation Training Improves Student Knowledge Retention during Lectures
- Mindfulness Meditation Reduces Implicit Age and Race Bias: The Role of Reduced Automaticity of Responding
- “Mindfulness and Retention: A Potential Solution to the Lack of Persist” by Sandra Parsons
- Promoting healthy transition to college through mindfulness training with first-year college students: Pilot randomized controlled trial – PMC
- Ensuring College Student Success Through Mindfulness-Based Classes: Just Breathe
- Meditation in the Higher-Education Classroom: Meditation Training Improves Student Knowledge Retention during Lectures
- Meditation increases compassionate responses to suffering
Research conducted with MIEA (formerly Koru Mindfulness)
Other Resources
- Mindfulness and Retention: A Potential Solution to the Lack of Persistence of Community College Students
- The Atlantic: Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?
- 60 min special with Jon Kabat-Zinn
- Tedx: Social Media Addiction, Leslie Coutterand
- Tedx: How can mindfulness help us, Hedy Kober
- Social Media and Mental Health By Braghieri, Levy, and Makarin
- 60 Minutes Special on Mindfulness Anderson Cooper