There’s a particular vulnerability that comes with being young and capable. You’re energetic, you’re eager to prove yourself, and you genuinely want to help. These are beautiful qualities. They’re also exactly what makes you such an attractive target for people who’ve learned that the easiest way to get what they want is to let someone else do the work.
It starts innocently enough. A colleague asks if you can take on “just this one thing” because they’re swamped. A friend needs help moving, but somehow you’re the only one with a free weekend. Your boss mentions how impressed they are with your initiative right before assigning you a project that should really be someone else’s responsibility. Each request comes wrapped in flattery, urgency, or the implicit promise that this is how you get ahead.
The trick is that these people aren’t usually villains. They’re not rubbing their hands together plotting your exploitation. They’re simply taking the path of least resistance, and you’ve made yourself very, very easy to use. They’ve noticed that you say yes, that you’re reliable, that you want to be seen as a team player. And once they’ve noticed, they’ll keep coming back until you’re doing their job and yours, wondering why you’re exhausted while they seem to glide through their days.
What makes this especially insidious when you’re young is that you often can’t tell the difference between paying your dues and being taken advantage of. Everyone tells you that working hard early in your career is important, that you need to hustle, that success requires sacrifice. All of that is true. But there’s a massive difference between working hard for your own advancement and working hard to make someone else’s life easier while your own goals gather dust.
The person who’s using you will rarely frame it that way, of course. They’ll make it sound like opportunity. Like trust. Like they couldn’t possibly do this without you. They’ll appeal to your ego and your work ethic in the same breath. And because you’re young and still figuring out how the world works, you might believe that burning yourself out on their behalf is somehow an investment in your future.Here’s what actually happens when you let people use you: you get really good at being useful to them specifically. You don’t develop your own skills or pursue your own projects because you’re too busy putting out their fires. You don’t build a reputation as someone with vision or leadership because you’re known as the person who handles whatever no one else wants to do. Your resentment builds even as your boundaries crumble, and eventually you realize you’ve spent months or years advancing someone else’s agenda instead of your own.
The hardest part is that learning to say no feels terrible at first. You worry you’re being selfish or difficult. You imagine opportunities evaporating, relationships souring, your reputation taking a hit. Sometimes these fears feel so real that saying yes, even when it costs you, seems like the safer choice.
But here’s what happens when you start setting boundaries: the people who respected you keep respecting you, often more than before. The people who were using you get annoyed and move on to someone with softer edges. And you discover that you have time and energy for the things that actually matter to your own life. You start distinguishing between collaboration, where everyone benefits, and exploitation, where only one person does.
Being young means you’re still learning the difference between generosity and self-abandonment. Real generosity comes from a full cup. It’s helping because you genuinely want to and can afford to, not because you’re afraid of what happens if you don’t. When you help from that place, it feels good. It strengthens relationships instead of breeding resentment. When you’re being used, there’s always a slight sick feeling underneath, a sense that the math isn’t quite adding up.
You’ll know you’re being used when the requests are never reciprocated, when your own needs are treated as inconvenient, when the person can’t seem to function without you but also can’t be bothered to acknowledge what you’re doing for them. You’ll know because your help becomes an expectation rather than a gift, and the moment you can’t deliver, the warmth evaporates.
The solution isn’t to become cynical or refuse all requests for help. It’s to get better at evaluating what you’re being asked to do and why. Is this request reasonable? Is this person generally considerate of your time and energy? Will helping them actually benefit you in some tangible way, or is that just what they’re implying? Are you saying yes because you want to or because you’re afraid of the consequences of saying no?
Your youth is too valuable to spend it as someone else’s unpaid assistant. The energy you have right now, the hours you could pour into building something meaningful, the relationships you could invest in with people who actually value you as more than a resource—these things matter. They matter more than being liked by someone who only likes what you can do for them.
So when someone approaches you with a request that makes your stomach tighten, when you find yourself doing someone’s work in addition to your own, when the person who’s always asking for favors is never around when you need one, pay attention to that feeling. It’s telling you something important. You’re not being paranoid or selfish. You’re recognizing that your time has value and that not everyone who wants access to it deserves it.
Being young doesn’t mean you’re obligated to prove yourself by taking on more than your fair share. It means you have the opportunity to build good habits early, to learn the art of the strategic no, to invest your limited resources in people and projects that actually serve your growth. The people who matter will understand this. The ones who don’t were always planning to use you anyway.
