It's like we as humanity figured out how to stop aging and personal growth, but we set the age on the worst periods of human life, the teenage era.
Our friends, family members, partners, and strangers that are our age can't grow up; they act like children even though they are older on the time scale.
Everyone is creating their "Pleasure Machine," a place where we judge everybody, make fun of them, laugh, and get adrenaline and happiness as much as we want. The only downside is that when you leave the Pleasure Machine, you feel your worst time as lonely, emotionally unstable, and anxious. You need the Pleasure Machine to escape, to escape from your humanity.
What Makes Us Grown Up?
Is it time? Sure, it isn't. The proof is outside of the Pleasure Machine: friends, partners, and most of the humans that play little games on you. Your partner (if you can find any) plays political games, and they call it cute names as if they are wise. It is not about you; it never was. It is about them; they have not figured out their inner battles. Time is a constant moving in space and does not have influence over ourselves. The sword in the furnace does not become a sword while waiting; it needs to be hit again and again and again.
Experience has an incredible influence on us. We grow up not only from good experiences but also from the bad ones. When we do or say something that we feel regret for, we think of it, suffer, learn, and then we learn to move on as our new selves because there is no other way. But today, you have the Pleasure Machine to escape; you don't need any of it.
Somewhere, they find social media playing on our deepest humanity. Social interactions, wanting to be known, to know, and to be accepted by our tribe. The "Algorithm God" is designed to maximize profit by showing you ads. When you use a dating app, the dating app's "Algorithm God" doesn't want you to find a good date because they lose customers, and that's bad business. You need constant searching to use them, giving money to access features because they are designed to make you think that if you give money, you will find your soulmate. Like that, social media doesn't want you to become a grown-up; if you do, they lose you. You need constant searching for meaning, fun, and happiness because growing up is scary, so stay a teenager as long as you use the Pleasure Machine.
Creating regrets, fears, rejections, and fear of the unknown to advance when we face them, but not escaping, confronting them to fix our way into adulthood. There is no free candy, but we are free.