As the two fortysomething men at the trampoline park bounced over towards my seven-year-old daughter, the thought occurred to me: are kidults getting out of hand? Admittedly, taking your children to a trampoline park almost guarantees an injury, but as I stood on the viewing platform with the rest of the “old-school” adults, the growing shadows of the men plunging my daughter into darkness did give me pause. It’s Saturday afternoon, gents, shouldn’t you be in an ice bath somewhere or funnelling your wages into your crypto account or going down the slide at that BrewDog pub in Waterloo?
In fact, ice baths and crypto and soft-play pubs are further signs that kidults now officially run the capital. Everything is a little showy-offy game now. Apps have made formerly grim tasks like banking and dating into fun, shareable experiences. New research has said the gamification market is going to grow by 27 per cent over the next four years, spurred on by pandemic smart phone ultra-dependence.
This gamification is undoubtedly fuelling the kidult boom. To clarify, I’m not talking about struggling young people forced to live at home, more like the parents of those young people who have decided that they want to be young too. Specifically, they want to be 15 years old: very much a child but curious about sex and drinking and uncurious about anything that doesn’t involve self-gratification. You can see kidults on Lime bikes playing their little podcasts on their little earbuds, downing milky coffees from their sippy cups while recording little TikTok videos of themselves with their new muscles on display, saying things like, “I got this!”
If you’re 21 I’ll look the other way, but it’s the over-40s now. And they’re hurtling dementedly towards my daughter.
London, being a city, is a kind of playground for adults. I get that. Part of the attraction is to get lost, sleep around and indulge yourself. But urban life isn’t solely about that. It’s about meaningful work, developing society, and mixing with different people to share ideas. Instead, everyone now seems to be assessing their friends to see if “they are enhancing my life” and ditching them if they’re not.
Egomaniacal brats are creeping into every train carriage, every workplace, every WhatsApp group.
I say all this with a heavy dose of hypocrisy. After rescuing my thankfully unharmed daughter I took her to a birthday party and stopped there for a “quick drink” with the parents. Next thing I knew, it had turned from a kids’ birthday party into a kidult party where all of us middle-agers were downing shots, “sexy” dancing to Prince and smoking B&H. Reflected in the eyes of my children was not only the final fading light of admiration but the sight of me in full kidult glory, complete with the key kidult giveaway: despair.
“Give me a chance to be young again… this time I’ll do it right… this time.” Here’s hoping it’s just a phase.
Sam Smith’s crazy outfit
I was absolutely not offended by Sam Smith’s red carpet outfit at the Brits — it’s kind of the job of pop stars to wear insane things so that the rest of us don’t have to. But as a parent, I found it triggering.
The practicalities of wearing such a thing completely spun me out: “But Sam, how are you going to sit down for your meal? Where are you going to keep your phone and your keys?
“Getting home is going to be tricky, Sam — how will you get into a cab? Or squeeze through the Tube barriers? Sam, if you win an award, how will you climb the steps to the podium? You might even pop yourself on the award…
“Sam, please listen to me, stop waddling away… Sam!” Ruined my evening.
