Ask Lemmy

For most people never.

Petulant middle-aged children as far as the eye can see with few exceptions.

A child knows the adult drink is coffee.

A teenager knows the adult drink is alcohol.

An adult knows the adult drink is water.

Apparently it depends on skin colour and the severity of the charges. /s

Self-sufficiency, responsibility

Never. There is no line to cross, no milestone, nothing.

You will always be the same entity you are now. You should always work to improve yourself, but the stream of consciousness that is "you" is always going to be the same you.

Every day you wake up 1 day older and have 1 more day of accumulated experience. It's that accumulated experience that makes people think you're an "adult".

If you really absolutely need to assign a binary "I'm an adult" label, I think it's the day you realize that there is no such thing as an adult and all the people you thought were adults and therefore could handle adult responsibilities were actually just making it all up as they went, the same as you are doing right now.

Biologically: After pueberty.

Socially: Around 31.

Realistically: Never.

I remember one time someone told me "being an adult is when you realise you can cook yourself bacon whenever you want, and just eat it, and nobody will stop you".

When you are legally considered that in your country's law. Any other distinction is fuzzy and unlikely to be really useful.

My definition of an adult is simple:

"To be an adult, a person has to understand when it is appropriate to be childish"

When they start thinking about the consequences of their actions, and act accordingly instead of following pure impulse.

It's a spectrum

Some never become adults, becoming an adult to me is self-realization. That you have the ability to think and make decisions with input on your own. That you are self-capable of change in your life. It's accepting you have responsibilities outside of just yourself. I feel hat's part of it.

When I was in college (so maybe 20 or 21 years old), I asked my mom when I would start feeling like an adult. Without missing a beat, she said "I dunno. If you find out, let me know!" <3

I guess I started feeling more like a "real" adult when I started working full-time and rented a house instead of an apartment, though now even that pales in comparison to when I finally purchased my own home. Each phase of life feels more "grown-up" than the last, with new perspectives, greater understanding of my relationships with God and people, and matured confidence going into the new phase's challenges. And yet I'm still me at heart--as I like to call it, "a big kid with bills." I am very blessed.

When all your dreams are dead.

When you are at the point where essentially everything in your life is up to you. You make the decisions, you deal with the problems.

You get your adult trophy after a serious bout of cleaning

https://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-is-why-ill-never-be-adult.html

I think it’s when you decide it, plenty of children walking around in grown bodies paying bills but also letting the whims of the world carry them with their current never taking a stand and steering their own lives. To be an adult is both a choice to be free from undue influence but also to be fully responsible for your own actions.

Well, in the legal sense, I suppose it has to do with contracts and contract law. Some time ago in the US, it was determined that 18 was the legal age for adulthood because by then a person would be old enough to understand the terms of a contract and hold to those terms. Marriage is a contract. Military service is a contract. Getting a loan/mortgage is a contract.

You become an adult when you wish you were young again

for me it was when I was responsible for more than just myself.

I'm responsible for my spouse, my kids, the team I managed, etc.

I have to say, it's not worth it 🤣

When they start acting like it.

Adult is essentially like age-based gender. Different cultures say adulthood starts at different ages, physical markers, or after some ritual transition, and assign adults a certain role in society. Some people identify as adult or not adult regardless of what their culture assigns to them. It's all part of the arbitrary, usually unspoken rules each culture defines for itself.

I read somewhere that a parent's job in life was to make themselves unecessary to their children.

Parent does everything for a baby, but as the child gets older a parent teaches them to do more and more stuff for themselves: getting dressed, tying shoelaces, reading, good study habits, time management, relationships, cooking, good financial practice, etc. Eventually the parent has nothing left to teach the child and is no longer necessary (though hopefully their company is still appreciated). That would be the point at which the child becomes an adult.

18 years old, no need to complicate it

I'm lucky enough to be in my 30s and still have grandpa and his wife (my grandma by all accounts, but she doesn't want to be called that because it makes her feel old). I was visiting with them recently and said "I still feel like a stupid teenager. I don't feel like I'm an adult that knows what they're doing, I'm just doing the best I can" and my 83 year old grandpa replied "sweetheart, I still feel like I'm in my 20s, I don't think anyone ever really figures it out, no one knows how to be an adult".

So i think the answer is: never

When there's a bump in the night and you're the one responsible to go find out what it was

June....

The moment they accept they don't know everything/they can be wrong.
Something that can happen at any age bracket, imho...

Thinking about it, that may also mean quite a few people will never turn adults no matter how old they are.

When they decide to

EXACTLY MIDNIGHT LOCAL TIME ON THE CALENDAR DATE EIGHTEEN YEARS SUBSEQUENT TO THEIR BIRTH AS RECORDED ON A LEGAL BIRTH CERTIFICATE

/s

When they no longer feel a desire to argue with reality that they have faced fully (no lying to oneself) and have accepted that everything is temporary.

And they understand that the above is not a call for nihilism and resignation, but inner peace.

When the prefrontal cortex is mostly formed, somewhere around 25 to 30. It's the part that helps inhibition, like controlling your emotions and impulses, and also the last part of the brain to be finished. It's quite downhill from there!

Around adulthood.