Discussion

When Do We Become Adults, Really?

saltyoldman: When you stop playing video games. We have many many many man-kids.

Al-Khwarizmi: So according to you, playing a shooter game makes one a man-kid but watching an action movie doesn't? And if so, why?

Brajeshwar: [Personal View] No, we never. We just learn to act in public.btw, https://archive.ph/g3Bok

firtoz: Archive link: https://archive.is/g3Bok

happymellon: Video games are bad, but what about board games?Are card games also childish?Sports games?Perhaps we should stop playing games altogather and tell everyone at the Olympic Games to stop being children!Bloody chess players, don't they know how much they look like kids!

saltyoldman: you're falling down the slippery slope, my line is specifically at Video Games.

placebo: I think what the parent comment was hinting at is that there is no absolute separator between a non-adult and an adult. It is a thousand different things and the type of game you enjoy playing is not necessarily a good indicator on its own.

shinycode: So all the employees of companies that work in this industry are not adults if they play ? You are targeting a specific fringe of people too broadly.

hmontazeri: When we become parents

stinos: So people without children never become adults? Strange rule.Also not quit what the article is about.

firtoz: I can't access the article so I will respond to only the title.I use a rough threshold of how much responsibilities they can, or, have to endure, and manage to take care of in a good enough way.

shinycode: I know many people who have children and are not adults. And someone who never have kids will never be adult ?

vswaroop04: When you grow your wisdom teeth

haunter: Username checks out so I guess you are just ragebaiting

redrove: Or you never do and you become president.

rhdunn: So people who play games for a living are not adults? There are many people who create videos in Minecraft with complex builds, drawing inspiration from things like architecture, nature, etc.And there are many adults who play video games to unwind after work.And it's not just men who play video games. There are a lot of women who play video games including Minecraft and other games, including a huge range of more casual games.

hdgvhicv: A large number of people spent much of the early 2010s playing angry birds. Did they regress from being adults in the 00s to children in the 10s and then back to adults when they started doomscrolling instead?

vasco: Video games are indeed a child like activity, same way as other child lime activities it remains fun forever and has many positives. But hackernews in general fets very triggered whenever you say that spending any less than 100% of your free time playing and thinking about games is childish.

xxs: According to the article that's what 25% of people think.

kakacik: By far the best response here so far. But since we don't have clear definition and my threshold may be vastly different than yours, its anyone's guess.

saidnooneever: reminds me a bit of a kine from scroobius pip. something along the lines of 'we're all just bigger kids raising smaller kids'. Some spiritual lines consider humans to be all around 13 or 14 years old, in the mental plane.I dont think most people are very far apart from around that age anyway. Depending ofc on how one gets raised you might get to that maturity more or less quickly in life.(it has nothing to do with skills, eloquance or such things. More to do with how well a person can adapt and respond to stimuli of the nervous system (consciousness), and in my further opinion, how well someone can take and understand the perspective of others. (understanding without judgement).

rf15: I don't know, haven't really seen an adult in a long, long time.

whatgoodisaroad: it's a dynamic system where we feel less able to see ourselves as adults each time we gain therapy language to articulate trauma. something is gained with this language, but something is lost too

nly: Labels like "adult", and "successful" etc are all for other peoples benefit rather than our own. It's all a facade.I'd probably measure maturity in terms of how one navigates relationships.When it comes to my partner, being vulnerable, knowing when it's ok to share that I don't feel like an adult, that i'm scared or lack confidence, and when to put on a strong front and say it's all going to be ok, to make her feel safe, is the essence of what I consider to be a "grown ass man".But we're also planning a trip to the Lego House, Denmark together and we don't have kids. So there's that.

antuneza: You become adult when your parents die

AltruisticGapHN: I'm 51 now and I feel like I will never be an adult. Looking around I see a lot of broken people, each in their own peculiar ways. Everyone has some coping mechanisms, triggers, and behaviours rooted in childhood. I don't see it in a bad light, I think it is just humanity.

Vedor: This is really fine article. I agree with its overall sentiment that it's difficult to draw hard lines.Answering the question posed in title - I have no idea.When I was a kid, I thought that person becomes adult in the day of their 18 birthdays.But being 18 years old, I didn't feel so mature. "Maybe when I finish university", I thought. But nope, it didn't feel like being adult.Maybe when I have a stable, "real" job? Nope.Maybe after I leave my parents home? Still not.Maybe after marriage? It's still not that.I suppose I still consider being adult with being serious, busy, and in total control. And I don't feel that yet, probably I will never will.I feel that this view of adulthood is a bit childish. And most likely I never will feel adult in this specific way. We never are in a total control of our lives.But - do I feel more mature than in my 20'? Of course I do. I have much more responsibilities. My decisions and my actions are much more deliberate than they used to be.But I just feel that I still have a long way to go...

vintermann: Maturity is a value judgment. At best. At worst it's simply a power move. There's no objective way to measure your brain juices and say now you're "fully developed" or whatever.People eager to define other people as insufficiently adult adults, should be viewed with the same skepticism as people who want to put their political opponents in an asylum.If you think it's a problem that young adults today play too much video games or whatever, take the ball and not the man. The problem then is in the behavior, not in people's essence. The youth are as bad as every generation complains that they are, no more, no less.

sethammons: I don't think this holds any water. Plenty of orphan children. Also, my parents are alive and I firmly count myself in the adult camp.Like the article, I think much of what makes you an adult is taking responsibility. For some, the first time that happens may be when their parents die I suppose.

taneq: We become adults when we accept ultimate responsibility for everything.

Nevermark: No theoretical life stage partitions are correct. Some are useful.Every five years, my life and context have changed profoundly in ways I could never have predicted.I feel like I have lived many lifetimes.I am not sure how I would measure growing up. I could never stay at one level long enough to get effortlessly good at it. My head is too far into the clouds. The stars are so inviting.So I experience a lot of in-too-deep pressure, trying not to screw things up while working to achieve more than anyone might think is reasonable. With a regular remedial/recovery interval, after I screw things up.If I do grow up in any way, it is the accumulation of resilience and loss of fear that repeatedly digging myself out of my own craters provides. I have internalized that nothing can stop me. Nothing at all. Not even me, and that is saying a lot.

dupaslonia123: They say women are old by 30. And men are young till 60

rrgok: When there is no more physical development? A couple of years after sexuality has been stabilized physically.Why is that so clear in other animals but not in humans? Every other social construct is just mental gymnastics. We believe we are special and need to do these gymnastics to keep the importance up.

vintermann: Not a happy definition, but at least a clear and consistent one.

TheOtherHobbes: I've seen some definitions that include a few basic requirements, such as:- A basic level of emotional stability and self-control- Some ability to model consequences accurately- Some ability to negotiate and handle imperfections and challenges in social situations, including relationships and work- Some ability to accurately locate the line between internal and external responsibility, and to act accordinglyOn that basis it's not at all about age or life stages, but about social and emotional competence.This culture has a superficial understanding of social competence - more or less defined by "socially competent people get what they want."I don't think there's much understanding of emotional competence. The default framing seems to be "You're probably damaged and so is your partner (which is why you're not getting what you want)" and not so much "This is what a functional adult looks like."Work is even worse, with emotional competence being defined almost entirely by its relationship to profit and shareholder value, and not by any intrinsic human standard.

blueflow: Child abuse might be a large driver behind dysfunctionality in adulthood, with disability or early retirement as a consequence. There were some big child neglect cases around the millennium, since them, the topic got more attention from researchers.It used to be that traumatised kids got slapped with a ADHD, autism and/or borderline diagnosis and it got called a day. These are "that's just how you are" style diagnoses. Since 2018 there is CPTSD which finally connects the symptoms to how you got treated as a child. The denial phase is over.Lawmakers are a bit behind, as usual, but at this point the scale of the problems can't be denied anymore. Its too late for you and me, but I'm optimistic for future generations.

ReptileMan: There are 3 stages in life - when they care for you, when you care for yourself, when you are forced to care for someone else.So i would say that you become adult when you have kids. Due to reasons this is postponed (or missing) to older and older age.

sgt: Are you marooned on that island in Lord of the Flies?

axegon_: I never liked the idea of dividing life into segments since you can't really quantify or rather classify the circumstances. Libertarians are praising the idea of equal opportunity and reject the idea of equal outcome. I personally reject both conceptually. No one will ever or can ever have an equal opportunity because our opportunities don't necessarily mean they are all good. In practice, an opportunity is often choosing the lesser evil and in many cases that's a decision that will follow you throughout your life and will have life-long side effects. I've had to take difficult decisions and even though I undeniably took the right ones, I understand that some of those completely derailed some aspects of my life and I've accepted it. Some of those had to happen pretty early on to no fault of my own mind you, but to me, realizing that some things are outside your control and you have to accept reality, even if you hate it, is the day you become an adult. Of course, there are people who face no consequences no matter what they do and they die of old age with the mindset of a 4 year old. Especially if they were raised to be egomaniacal, self-obsessed, spoiled brats, of which there are a lot.This may be an unpopular opinion but everyone needs to face a critical mass of unfortunate events at some part of their life. The earlier it happens the easier it is down the road.

ReptileMan: Yes. When you don't have kids you can always quit the game/rat race one way or another if it gets too much. With kids - it is different. Kids are the only burden you can't easily shrug off in this life.

cyber_kinetist: But we know that nobody really does that - it's just too hard and lonely to accept all responsibility solely to ourselves, even as an adult. That's why we learn to rely on each other sometimes, and I don't think that's a childish or irresponsible act!

sethammons: > On that basis it's not at all about age or life stages, but about social and emotional competence.I like that. And because humans are (sometimes poor) pattern matchers, we are confusing that for the proxy of age.

annie511266728: I think a lot of people feel this, they just stop saying it out loud.At some point I realized “adults” aren’t people who figured things out, they’re just people who got used to not knowing — which is both kind of freeing and a little unsettling.

sethammons: I have been a parent since I was 15. Officially married and moved on our own at 19. Graduated from the university at 22. Struggled hard-core until about 30 when my career changed and finally kicked off. My wife became an at home mom for our now three kids. It was my 40s when I realized, "oh, others see me as the adult in the room." I joke and say, "i have always been in my 30s," but I do feel a change recently. Very much facing forest dweller stage already with my oldest getting married.What makes an adult? I think accepting responsibility for your (and often someone else's) condition is a big part of it. I did that at 15. I double downed at 30 when I became our sole provider. But it was my 40s when I started to feel like an adult.I see many "adult" children and many more adults acting like children. The difference seems to be a combination of self-awareness, social awareness, and responsibility taking.

sethammons: I assume you grew up in different circles than me. I have seen countless kids shrugged off growing up poor and around drug addiction. I have heard the rich shrug them off to boarding school sometimes.

shinycode: So you’ve never seen parents quit and neglect their kids ? That does not exists ?

ReptileMan: I have seen of course. But the point is - if you abandon everything in life right now while childless you are not a failure as human being. It is your right to say fuck it all at any moment. If you abandon your kids you are.

sethammons: This is an interesting question. Neoteny is the preservation of juvenile features into adulthood and is a hallmark of domestication. Humans have been undergoing self-domestication so features like rounder faces and softer jaw lines are persisting past sexual maturity.We _know_ the human brain is finishing its development in our early to mid twenties, maybe 10 years post puberty. This extra brain development likely needed for our advanced social and tool needs, and is a unique niche for humans. Our hidden brain development does make a difference. Other primates don't display this.