Why Are So Many Adults Acting Like Kids?

These are trying times. People are working harder and earning less. They’re buffeted by terrifying headlines and grim predictions. They’re having less sex and living with parents longer. And they’re burrowing under weighted blankets and escaping into the childish comforts of colouring books (or the fairytale fantasies of corporate theme parks and video games). If life in the 1930s was marked by a Great Depression, and the 2010s by a Great Recession, one might say our current decade is marked by a Great Regression. This return to childhood manifests in the things we consume, in how we spend our time, even in the ways our societies are governed.