A person’s eighteenth birthday is one of the most important moments in someone’s life. After all, not only are you legally allowed to drive without a curfew, but it’s the moment where you are now responsible for yourself.

However, in this day and age, a lot of the time those responsibilities that were once only given to us when we turn 18 get handed down a lot sooner, and we’re forced to grow up more independently.

I used to have this perception that, to be an adult, I would need to move away and get a full time job. Yet, I’ve grown to realize that time isn’t the same for everyone, and people are ready for different things at different ages; this is what makes me believe that no-one is REALLY a grown-up.

Age isn’t something that makes you an adult; having kids and getting married are just optional trappings of adulthood, and many psychologists discuss prolonged adolescence and how it coincides with emerging adulthood.

I started to realize that a lot of people I’m acquainted with are actually more grown-up than I know. Kids my age are paying bills and taking care of themselves, forced to become this figment of what an ‘adult’ is by the circumstances around them.

But many psychologists share a different idea: due to biological or even sociocultural factors, humans tend to have this extended period of where the development between childhood and adulthood is delayed.

Personally, I agree with this perspective: how society works today and even our current economic state greatly contributes to this newly found epidemic of extended adolescence.

Especially when faced with a variable like money, since not only has the cost of living skyrocketed tremendously, but so has the cost of tuition for higher education.

College is one of the few experiences in this world that actually helps people with growing up, as they start to get a hand on being outside away from the entanglement of their family. Being able to not be so  dependent on the people that raised you and start to make decisions for yourself is what makes kids learn how to reach this idea of adulthood. But due to rising prices of college tuition, a lot of kids struggle to pursue that option.

It’s also important to know that even humans themselves are contributing to this as it’s become a trend for parents to give their children freedoms as if they were teenagers.

This goes back to the widely known “sephora kids” that went viral in the year 2024, where young girls from ages seven to ten were influenced by social media to buy makeup and skincare, things that they do not need at that age.

But as much as external factors pay the price for this, it’s clear to note that psychological effects are as much to blame for this as well.

This problem is more identified within men specifically as a lot of the time, most men wait until their late thirties to actually start to grasp the idea of settling down.

Which isn’t a bad thing per say, everyone grows at their own pace but at some point you have to really want a future for yourself and living a bachelor lifestyle isn’t something that sticks to you forever.

Becoming an adult is hard for so many people in this world. No one really knows what it’s like to have responsibility until you’re in those shoes.

The world is so kaleidoscopic in the sense that really listening to who you are is the only way for you to reach full adulthood.