Dubbed the "Great Regression", more adults across the world are beginning to embrace kid-like or adolescent behaviour.
It is on display in what we do (think Lego) and what we view (think superheroes).
In 2009, about a year after the release of the film Iron Man, the Walt Disney Company purchased Marvel Studios for almost $5 billion – a move that gave them the rights to all of the comic book giant's characters.
Since then, Disney has established the Marvel cinematic universe, releasing films that are wildly successful. Some reports estimate that the Marvel movies have grossed $US25 billion ($37.35 billion) worldwide and the franchise is valued at $US50 billion ($75 billion).
It's just one sign that the embrace of all things childlike isn't going anywhere.
In 2021, the Franklin Institute, a science museum in Philadelphia said that there were 400 billion pieces of Lego in existence at that time, roughly 62 pieces for every person on this planet.
And in October, it was reported that the fantasy card game Magic: The Gathering became toy company Hasbro's first brand to exceed $US1 billion ($1.49 billion) in value.
Even more niche movements linked with age regression are also popular. On TikTok, the hashtag #kidcore — which focuses on brightly-coloured nostalgic fashion — has 1.5 billion views. One subreddit that focuses on "age play", where adults act as different ages including infants, currently has over 27,000 members.
So behaving like a kid even when you're an adult has plenty of fans. In fact those who embrace their regressive side say it helps them with self-confidence and coping with the pressures of modern life.
But there are also many who worry this type of behaviour makes us self-centred.
"So things like being relatively impulsive and brash, being disinhibited – things like not necessarily being as fully committed and persevering with things [and] being more inclined to jump from one thing to the next," Paul Howell, from the University of New Brunswick, tells ABC RN's Future Tense.
Howell links adolescence with individualism.
"Not having that sense of commitment and duty to things – even to things like voting, for example. Having a sense of civic duty."
Professor Howell says this could also limit social growth.
"[Regression to adolescence] does mean that we're not as able to come together as a society [or] as communities in order to address difficult problems. And obviously, right now, we're looking at one of the most pressing problems: climate change," he says.
"And we're not going far enough to try to tackle these things."
However he says one benefit of adolescent qualities becoming obvious in adult society is more inclusivity.
"There's really one very important benefit, which is the way in which when you have a more individualistic society, and people believe in those ideas and principles, that also implies a more tolerant society. A more open society," he says.
The flip side
Not everyone believes that age regression is a bad thing. Some argue it is more a symptom than a cause of social ill.
Matt Alt, a writer and essayist based in Tokyo, says that while the idea of telling young people to act their age is "as old as time itself", there are reasons why adults are regressing to their youth now.
"When you see situations in the West, such as millennials being dumped on for not drinking as much as they should, not buying cars as much as they should, not dating as much as they should, it takes on a much sharper sort of societal critique," he says.
Alt argues that younger generations don't possess the "traditional avenues of expressing yourself as an adult", such as careers, houses and families.
And, because of that lack of access, he says it's "counterproductive to categorise all manifestations of kid-like behaviour among adults as being unalloyed negatives".
"Because when you think about it, when we're down, it's often the case that people even who don't think of themselves as juvenile will turn to nostalgic pleasures … That is a very normal and healthy sort of behaviour."
Alt suggests that regression could even be a positive force. And he likens it to something we've seen before.
Japan led the way
During the 1990s, Japan's "bubble economy" burst. The resulting financial crash "ushered in two decades of economic stagnation," Alt says.
"And the way that [Japan's] young people grappled with that stagnation – with their dreams having had their wings clipped – was a precursor of things that we're seeing all over the world right now."
Up until the economic collapse, it was expected that young Japanese people would graduate from tertiary education, launch careers, then settle down and start families.
But during the 1990s, this became difficult. And so young Japanese people began to embrace "very juvenile behaviours", Alt says.
"[You saw] grown-ups refusing to graduate from watching cartoon shows or reading comic books. You saw the rise of large adult fandoms. You saw the rise of young people prioritising themselves over their futures in many ways."
Alt says that, while this behaviour was initially seen as negative by Japanese authorities, the behaviour turned into a "surprising source of energy and power for Japan as a whole later on".
He points to the example of Japanese anime and comic books, and how the associated merchandise "turned into one of its major export programmes in modern years".
This regression also helped encourage the innovation of communication technology.
"It's young women in Japan who pioneered mobile texting, using pocket pagers as makeshift texting devices, and then later enthusiastically adopting early cell phones and early mobile internet programs way before they came out in the West."
Shared disappointment
Of course, the elephant in the room is the rise of the "political man-baby", exemplified by the often-infantile antics of Donald Trump. Did the rise in adolescent-style pursuits inadvertently fuel the rise of Trumpism and help normalise a self-centred approach to life?
Alt says such criticisms miss the fact that there's a positive way of embracing childlike sensibilities as well as a destructive way, although both are the result of a "certain disappointment with society".
"They're fueled by people who want something different. One wants something new and delights in transgressing boundaries through play, but the other is more interested in reverting to an early form and polices boundaries through hate and violence."
Alt says it's worth asking if childish sensibilities really lead to an erosion of reality? Or if this regressive behaviour is an acknowledgment "that our futures are not as rosy as they used to be?"
"After years of economic and social and political chaos, there really doesn't seem to be much of a light at the end of the tunnel anymore. [So] who can blame people for embracing their nostalgic childhood pleasures?"
After all, what's wrong with a bit of fun? There could even be a benefit to an adult being a big kid every now and then.
"Adults playing with Lego, adults embracing fandoms, adults expressing themselves in ways that were traditionally associated with children – it might well result in absolutely new tools that we can use to navigate this late capitalist post-industrial society that we're all experiencing."
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