Modern adults often remain psychologically childish, seeking constant stimulation, validation, comfort, and protection. Screens, entertainment, politics, relationships, and workplaces keep this immaturity alive by rewarding dependence and escape. Real maturity begins when one stops running from silence, discomfort, and responsibility, and turns inward with clarity instead of demanding that the world soothe the inner child.
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Originally published in The Sunday Guardian on 7 dec '25
Consider relationships. Adults today demand the emotional care that children demand from parents. They require constant reassurance, immediate validation, and unending comfort.
In 2023, a major psychological survey found that adults now spend seven hours a day on screens outside of work, not for learning or creating, but for consuming entertainment or entertainment disguised as seriousness. The machines have grown intelligent, but the users have quietly regressed. The question today is simple: are we surrounded by adults, or by children wearing adult bodies?
Walk through a mall, scroll through a feed, or sit in a meeting. The faces are adult, the reactions are juvenile, and the inner world is still governed by impulse. The passport claims thirty or fifty, yet the being within rarely crosses the mental age of five. The mismatch between biological age and psychological age has never been wider. The calendar keeps turning, but consciousness refuses to grow.
