As a 20+ year old with a long investment horizon, is it silly of me to want to focus on dividend investing?

I am a dividend investor too and I am in 20+

Definitely not. I too am like you who preferes regular dividends as a source of passive income in the long run. No doubt I have a long time horizon as well but my ability to stomach high risk investments is not as strong.

What you could do is to split your budget between both and enjoy both the upside of growth stocks and dividends stocks (like REITs) if you feel that you could be "losing out" from long term growth.

The only con about dividned paying stocks is that if you don't reinvest the returns, usually it means they are not compounding.