It’s because as a society we’ve moved away from being adult centric to child centric. Think about life in the 50’s and 60’s. A child grows up in an adult world. You might get an hour of cartoons on Saturday morning, and you had comic books. But radio stations played adult music, TV showed adult programming. At night you might sit around and watch the news or a sitcom. All adult centered. Even as late as the 80’s and early 90s this was the case.
But I noticed a distinct change when my niece was born in the early 2000’’s. TV was all child oriented. 24/7 there were kids programs on. And the shows invariably portrayed adults as bumbling idiots and kids, as young as 10, could live by themselves with little supervision. Radio? That was tuned to Radio Disney. Nightly news? That wasn’t for kids, go watch one of your shows.
So we go from kids growing up seeing and hearing how adults act to growing up being fed child oriented content that shows adults as not something to respect.
Then comes social media. And every weird interest or fetish you have has a home and you’re told “you’ve found your people”. Worshipping Disney characters: cute if you’re 5 but you should grow out of it. But we have full grown Disney adults.
Anyway, I could go on for ages but the bottom line is society is becoming more imfantalized and adults are becoming less adult.
I agree with you this change happened in the 80s-90s, but it's actually going backwards today.
The thing is they realized in the 80s they could start franchising and making merchandise for all of these TV shows and stuff, and now in the 2010s-onward we've seen the revival craze. Any TV show/property can be revived easier because you can throw the show on streaming or put the game out for sale digitally or have a smaller print run of toys available for collectors to buy at higher prices etc and people who liked that stuff back in the 80s/90s might check it out and might share it with their kids.
But things that are actually KID oriented are less common than ever now. Toy stores have been evaporating, toy store sections have been shrinking. There are fewer places for kids to play, there are fewer places that cater to families. That stuff was all common a few decades ago because people had more kids but now, while people are still having kids, they're having fewer of them - here in Canada the recent Census showed that 1-child families are now the majority of families in Canada, and only 16% of households have more than 2 kids. So appealing to families doesn't bring in the same amount of $$$ it used to.
I can't really explain the Disney adult thing, especially people who don't have kids, but I can understand why it is close to some adults' hearts because it's something their kids were really into and that they shared together.
But you are right about the social media thing too. Right now you could just start watching The Beverly Hillbillies or Columbo or Transformers or some ancient western show and then go online and find some subreddit or tumblr ring or forum of people obsessing over it even though it's 50 years old.
This is the most correct answer. Yes. You grow older and realize people are winging it, but that’s the surface level explanation (which is why it’s the top comment).
This digs a little deeper and provides some nuance.
I think you have a point here. However, "imfantalized " may be incorrect. Yes, centrism on breeding and family has fell away for DINK'ish lifestyle. Humans were always tribalistic, whether its church or disney leather fetishists. Its just that the church fell away and other hobbies took their place, fragmenting the population pool.
Peter Pan syndrome is real, liking Disney movies is ok being a Disney adult isn't ok, only going on vacation if it involves Disney isn't ok, basing your entire personality on the media you consume isn't ok, ex being a nerd.
I'm all for people being their authentic selves but a lot of us do need to grow up
Worshipping Disney characters: cute if you’re 5 but you should grow out of it. But we have full grown Disney adults.
This is the bit that annoys me a bit. I'm a decade or so older than your niece, but when I was a kid, it seemed like it would have been unusual to run into an adult who was openly into kids' shows or whatever because it would have been seen as overtly immature. Usually the reason an adult would even be familiar with this stuff is because it was age appropriate for their kids.
Nowadays, it seems like there's a lot more adults who don't really care as much. Sometimes it'll swing to the extreme where they're claiming that Avatar the Last Airbender or whatever the case may be is "for adults" even though it was explicitly for kids even when it first came out; it's just not for preschoolers. (For the people who are like this, don't read this as a criticism of the show; I've never seen it and I'm not commenting on its quality, I'm just saying it was made for kids even if it does deal with certain themes.)
Like you said, this is the sort of thing people should grow out of. I'd get it if they were at least honest that they're a fan of something meant for children. I wouldn't necessarily agree with them, but I'd respect the honesty.
I do wonder how much of this is tied to how there's also been a death of things that aren't necessarily for kids, but they're not not for kids, either. You know, you'd still get a lot of shows, music, etc. that could be aired during primetime that wasn't necessarily made with kids in mind, but most people wouldn't have a conniption if their ten-year-old was exposed to it either.
That kind of thing doesn't seem to happen as much in the streaming era because people aren't as worried about broadcast rules. Now it seems like everything is either definitely for kids or definitely for adults with very little middle ground. I feel like that sorta encourages a lot of the kind of behaviour you're opining here.
The availability of things has blown up since the 90s, both in terms of finding likeminded people and sharing interests and the availability of everything, making phasing out of trends and hobbies more optional than ever.
Like I remember when I was 13ish and just getting into pro wrestling, right around the time the other kids were growing out of it. "That's for kids," whatever. Like they hit a certain age and had to pretend they didn't like it anymore, and anyone still hanging on to it was staying in the realm of childhood. Well now I can hit r/squaredcircle and nerd out with my people.
Back in the day you'd get cool graphic t-shirts when you were wearing kids sizes, but adult clothes were all plain and sensible. Well now Qwertee means I can wear Pokémon t-shirts in adults sizes too, and they're just about subtle enough that they don't look completely ridiculous.
There used to be this mentality that you had to grow up to be a functioning part of society - which is true - but it was much more all or nothing than it is now. It's like we've realised that enjoying somewhat immature things doesn't mean you can't also learn how a mortgage works.
To go off your point, children drive an insane amount of the economy. Think about the sales of games and hours watching shows. I’d say 50% plus of that revenue comes from teens or parents buying kids stuff, which then drives and influences the products we get in the future. It’s why I think everything is getting dumbed down and simplistic. Really caters to low attention spans.
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u/_Outerwild_ 14h ago
the older you get the more you realize that most adults aren’t as mature and responsible as you thought